


Full of Stars

by laudanum_and_wine



Series: Ursa Minor [1]
Category: Control (Video Game)
Genre: Dylan wakes up and is still a jerk, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Learning to be Human, Mental Instability, NSFW, Not Foundation compliant, Recovering from being temporarily incorporeal, Sleeping in the office then sleeping in the office, Strangers to codependant weirdos to lovers, anger management issues, but honestly that's not surprising
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:53:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 26,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24329854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laudanum_and_wine/pseuds/laudanum_and_wine
Summary: One day Casper Darling is just there, waiting on the cool cement floor to be found, and Jesse brings him back into the fold. She had expected a monster, a villain, a genius, really anything but a man.Casper on the other hand is simply trying to recall how to speak words and use language to convey concepts. Once he's got that down he's trying to figure out what the fuck to DO with all these concepts.(Update as of 5/31: Whoops! Missed a chapter back at 5, updated to fix, feel free to re-read that one!)
Relationships: Casper Darling & Jesse Faden, Casper Darling/Jesse Faden, Dylan Faden & Jesse Faden, Jesse Faden & Emily Pope
Series: Ursa Minor [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1780912
Comments: 99
Kudos: 62





	1. Chapter 1

There was a kind of dark humor in his reluctance to be alive. Humans spent so much time trying to stay alive, (eat/sleep/reproduce) to keep their existence assured, but here he was feeling more than a little resentful (hate/love/opinion) of consciousness. He chewed on the word 'resentment' with interest once he recognized the thought. Resentment/joy.

Around him there was dark and light. Or rather dark/sleep and light/pain. Which meant sleep was sort of the opposite of pain, and then the thought black/white and then sleep/death/Hedron? He breathed. Breath was a thing. That took a lot of his attention.

"Doctor?"

The voice was blue, he thought, like clear cold water. And then water was a thought, (bright/summer/chlorine) and cold, and Christ he was really really really fucking cold/shaking/ice! New thoughts were whirling fast now, cataloging experiences and observations as fast as he could register them, a screaming whirlwind of a brain-storm (dry erase boards/white and black/color/trees) that left him feeling vaguely ill (nausea/hunger).

"Darling..?" 

The voice was closer now, and she was so warm for having a blue voice: red hair and lips that he could tell wanted to smile. Or bare her teeth? And then there were thoughts for that which he needed to watch float past (fire/rage/hunger/desire) before he could think himself again.

"Director," he managed to say it out loud. All the shattered thoughts slowed their spin. He thought that he had a body.

"Just Jesse," she said (just/only/definitions/so much more) and he nodded in reply and she went on. "I have so many questions for you Doctor. I'm really glad you're here. First let's, uh. Let's get out of here."

She had no idea what he needed. He had no idea what he needed. Rage/hunger/water/cold.

"Okay," he said, like it was a decision, like it was an actual question.

She pulled him to his feet, so he stood. The mental cascade followed: legs/pants/clothes/furs. She walked away, so he walked too, following (lead/follow/duckling). It seemed too fast and too slow. He couldn't remember how to walk down the sand covered stairs when they got to them, but she turned, took his hand, helped him down with only one slip and some minor panic on his part, then she was gently pulling him along by the hand and not letting go.

Admittedly he was clutching, and probably quite useless. Duckling.

Jesse paused walking past some satellite dishes and lines (ley lines/control point) and glanced at him. He didn't understand her look. They walked over the peeling electrical tape, past things he couldn't name, until the walls were wallpapered with something he didn't recognize (pattern/repeated/signal?). She let go of his hand, tugging something over her head, then pressed her left palm to his again.

"Darling," she paused, having to look up just a little to make eye contact, and squeezed his hand once. It might have been meant to comfort from anyone else but from the Director it felt like a way to assess his attention. "Things here are still bad. It's dangerous. I wasn't exactly expecting to find you. I need you to do as I say for a while here, okay? You need to close your eyes, and don't open them until I say so. It might be loud. I might have to shoot things. Do you understand?"

The wall in front of them shifted, like scales/plates/wound. 

"Yes," he wanted to turn around, go back to the cold room, the light/dark. He wanted to sleep/die. But she had questions for him, so he wouldn't. He squeezed her hand back, once, a reply. She pulled on headphones and he closed his eyes. It was loud.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen, guys, I just wait for inspiration to hit and write whatever the fuck needs to get written. And apparently my brain wants to write smart men falling all over themselves for competent women.


	2. Chapter 2

"Is he alright?"

"Define 'alright' in the context of the FBC."

"Fair point."

The voices were muffled, but not hushed. Distant/far/separate. It was dark, and mostly warm (his back was cold) and he wanted to ignore them.

"We really could use his help with HRA production," the first voice said.

"We could really use his help on a lot of things," the Director paused. He could hear her thinking through the wall. "You're right, HRAs take precedent. Let's see what he knows about them, try to ramp up production, get everyone a backup unit and some extras for anyone we can recover from the Hiss. Then I think we ask about the incantation, or whatever it is, and work on recovery."

He sat up, slowly, found his glasses on a table beside him, blinked into the darkness at repetitive yellow squares on everything. His noise must have alerted the women in the hall, because the conversation paused.

"Give me a minute to talk to him, Emily. I'll update you once we have a more solid plan."

"Right, thanks Dir-. Thanks Jesse."

The click of shoes faded down the hall. He breathes in the dark, blurry shapes slowly becoming clearer, and doesn't think. Blank/empty/content and the thought almost has a voice, which he's savoring, just beginning to think about that voice-

The door opens, the thought is gone, the Director slowly enters the room.

"Darling. How are you feeling?" Her voice is dry, neither light nor serious. The Service Weapon rests by her right hand. Her hair has a halo of pale copper from the fluorescent light of the hall behind her.

"Alive," his voice. "You need more HRAs." It's not really a question, but Jesse shrugs like it was.

"Emily thinks so. On the other hand neither one of us is wearing one right now, and yet here we are," she turns, hand on the wall. "I'm turning the lights on, alright?"

He doesn't reply, and a moment later the lights flick on, and somehow he's still shocked. Shock/awe/recoil. The Director is wearing jeans now, looking relaxed, more like a "Jesse" than a faceless arm of a shadowy institution. She has a thin smile on her face, like she wants to hit him. He thinks that his capacity to identify things may be compromised, or maybe not. Maybe she wants to hit him. He says as much, but the words seem strange.

"Your voice sounds like The Board. Static." 

"I've never spoken to The Board, that I know of," his words are clear now, and he thinks for a moment. "But that probably doesn't mean anything."

"Are you hungry?" She turns back to the hall, and he stands and follows her without conscious thought. 

They go to her office, Trench's office, and the furnishings are almost the same, except for a few knickknacks. A portrait he's sure she didn't sit for.

The Director points him to the sofa and he sits. His labcoat smells like ozone, he notices. She digs through her desk, coming up with some fruit and bottles of water, and hands some over while she sits beside him. She begins eating, staring down the doorless hallway to the hotline chamber. He mimics her, thumbs digging into an orange rind.

"Dylan, my brother. He's in a coma," she doesn't sound angry. She doesn't sound anything. 

"He's why the Hiss are still here," Darling observes. Now she is angry.

He watches her hands clench, watches her fingers twitch to the Service Weapon, and she almost growls at him.

"You kept a little boy locked up almost his whole life, how fucking dare you-"

"We can save him," Darling eats a segment of the orange. "And the people floating in the halls. Maybe not the ones with deformities and the desire to murder you, but maybe them too."

She's glaring.

"Is he," Darling stops peeling the orange. Sets it to the side, on the arm of the bland tan leather sofa, where it will leave a stain of juice/sugar/blood. He tries again, "Is he in any pain?"

"No," the answer takes a long time. "No, I don't think so. I cut off the Hiss but… I think he's just asleep." She isn't glaring.

"Good," he says, and picks apart the scrap of orange peel he holds.

She reaches past him, picks up the orange bleeding onto the leather, and begins to eat it as the silence stretches through the room. Finally she finishes the orange, and begins to peel another one, "Tell me everything you know about Hedron and the resonance."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope someone reads and enjoys this self indulgent bullshit, because I'm having fun writing it!
> 
> Chapters are gonna stay short like this in all probability. I dont think this has much of a plot, other than "Jesse saves Darling then saves Darling" so exit stage left now if that's not your thing.


	3. Chapter 3

"Well does he seem himself?"

"How would I know, Raya. I'd never met the guy until Monday," Jesse leaned against the counter, arms crossed.

"Jesse, we've talked about this," Underhill was referring to her name and Jesse, as normal, ignored her. 

"Everything I know about him I know from educational videos that look like something straight out of the cold war. But based on that alone, no, he doesn't seem himself."

Underhill paused, adjusting the microscope before her slowly. She wasn't looking at it, rather past it, to some middle ground where only she could see. It was where she looked when Jesse said something particularly stupid, so Jesse knew that look rather well.

"Be patient with him. I'd suggest I could come up to see him, but perhaps… Perhaps I'd better not for now. Did he, ah. Have you mentioned me?" The scientist was now actively reviewing the specimen before her.

"I did. I told him you were down here, and the mold was under control," Jesse went on even as Underhill scoffed. "He recognized your name, as much as he recognized Pope's or Marshall's. He's just not having much of a reaction to anything. It's like shock. Probably is shock."

Underhill worked in silence for a time, Jesse looked around the lab. Poked at a sample and had her hand slapped.

"If it's shock then he needs time," Underhill gathered the errant samples onto a tray and moved them away from Jesse. "He's up in his office now?"

"I could only get him to stay there by promising o wouldn't go to any other departments without him."

"He's imprinted on you."

"What?"

"Nothing, just a joke. Go eat lunch, Jesse: you look like you're about to faint and I won't have you breaking anything here! Take Andy with you and have him bring back something for me and Steve, will you?" Underhill turned back to the microscope.

"Alright. Thanks for talking with me Raya," Jesse smiled as the other woman huffed at the name, and left the lab.

One of the patrolmen jumped back from the door, almost exactly as though he'd been listening, and she raised a brow, "Andy?"

"Yes ma'am!"

"Underhill says you all need some rations. Care to join me on a trip to the cafeteria?" She led the way, assuming compliance. He hurried to catch up.

"Yes ma'am. I never thought cafeteria food would sound so good, but after a few weeks of nothing but pistachios and protein bars, I sure am glad you all were able to reopen the caf. Ma'am," he tacked on the last word almost as an afterthought. 

"We've got most of Executive and Research secured now, and I think everyone was glad to see the quality of food and beds improve. I never see you posted anywhere but here, Andy: are you on the normal rotation?" Jesse had led them to the lift, and punched the button to raise them back to the relative normalcy of Central Research. Andy seemed like a gossip and not too impressed by her status as Director, but honestly she could use that. Hearing an honest opinion from someone who wasn't Simon or Emily would be good.

"No ma'am," he started.

"Just Jesse: I don't care much about titles and there's really no one here to care," she gestured at the smooth cement walls dragging past the elevator. 

"No Jesse," he smiled, and she could tell he knew what she was doing. Smarter than Underhill gave him credit for, this one. "The Doctor was able to create a few more of those inoculant pills for the mold. She only managed to make a handful, so Steve and I volunteered to stay on mold duty and take them. Means we have to deal with that noxious smell all day, but it also means we're not gonna eat that shit. God, I can't believe I ever wanted to, smelling it now, it takes an hour to stop being revolted by it, every damn shift." He hesitated in his step, realizing he'd sworn in conversation with the Director.

Jesse laughed, "Yeah, it's pretty rancid down there. Thank you for volunteering for that, I appreciate it. Knowing that the rangers going down there are the ones immune to the lure of that mold shit makes me feel much better about sending you." She swore casually, hoping it'd reassure him. She thought she caught a smile. 

They walked past the mold checkpoint with a nod from Jesse, and to the cafeteria. The tables were sparsely populated, but it was progress and Jesse was still happy to see. Jesse clapped Andy on the shoulder, hoping it came off as encouraging.

"I think they have vegetable soup today, if that's your thing, otherwise I want to say it's lasagna," Jesse laughed. "You're right: I've never been so excited at the thought of congealed cheese. Have a good day Andy!"

"You too, Director!" The ranger waved, and began loading a tray up with food. 

Jesse kept her smile in place as she walked over and filled two bowls with soup, then walked the long staircases all the way to the top of Research. She so wanted to levitate, so wanted to just jump and be there already, but it freaked the staff out. And considering they still didn't have a ETA on ending the lockdown she didn't want to freak out the staff any further. They already had to sleep on sofas, with their HRAs still on and their clothing washed in the bathroom sinks. As the threat of the Hiss became less immediate she had to instead fight for morale.

She was exhausted.

She paused, set the tray down, and caught her breath. Beside her there was the occasional flow of staff between the labs and the elevator to Executive. Some agents smiled on their way past. She watched the soup steam, and took a moment longer, thinking of entropy, and time, and 'recovery' both as a concept and a villain. 

Darling was at his desk when she came in, sketching something again. Emily looked up from her own space, "Jesse. How was the Pit?"

"Still rancid, but we seem to be pushing the mold back down ever so slightly," Jesse set the food on the work table, and Emily walked over.

"Oh, soup again? Let it never be said that Jesse Faden doesn't eat her vegetables. I'm going to head down there myself, you two enjoy lunch!" Emily smiled, and walked out with clipboard in hand. She had obviously been waiting, but managed to make her exit seem casual enough. 

"Doctor Underhill says hello," Jesse set a bowl down next to the paper Darling was sketching on. She squeezed his shoulder: physical contact seemed to bring him back to reality best in these situations. "Would you like soup?"

"Thank you," was the reply, and Jesse looked over with something not unlike surprise. Less obvious than shock, she hoped.

He pushed the paper toward her while he started on the soup. She leaned against the work table and peered down at it, some kind of crystal lattice it seemed. 

"I think this will work," he was watching her look over the drawing, eating his lunch without looking down. It would have been disconcerting if she wasn't used to it already. "We'll use the pneumatic system like a giant tuning fork, harmonized to the same frequency all over the Oldest House. Any place the pneumatic system passes through should be safe, we just need these… Hammers, as it were, to hit the tubes every so often in three right way. We'll also need to monitor and maintain the resonance in real time, but that's logistics, we can make it work."

"What do we need to build one of these Hammers?" Jesse gestured down.

"A Blackrock crystal for each one. We'll need to tune them, I'll need into the audio studio below Central, then need back in the lab to work with you-" 

"Why me?" She interrupted. 

Darling was quiet for a long moment, then set aside his half empty soup and started a new drawing. Without breaking eye contact. She decided it was actually disconcerting even as he spoke, "Hadron was the vehicle, but Polaris was the resonance. The HRAs have a feedback loop that's making them work for now, but it's a translation of the real sound, not a copy." His eyes slid down without focusing.

"How did you know about Polaris?" Jesse knew how he knew. He wasn't just missing those weeks, he wasn't just lost in the house. Wherever he was she thought he'd been everywhere, all over the house, all over places not-the-house.

He shrugged, and continued this new sketch. He was smiling, just a little, and she thought that was a good sign.

Her lunch was gone, and his abandoned mid-consumption. Jesse stacked their dishes back on the cafeteria tray and left it on the workbench.

"I'm going to nap," Jesse stated, and moved past him to the sofa they'd tucked in the corner of his workspace. She stilled the clicking inertia toy as she walked past, and settled onto the leather with an arm thrown over her eyes and her feet crossed. "Wake me if anyone needs anything or anything attacks or Ahti comes by." She could tell he nodded, she didn't know how she knew but was sure he had.

"Sleep well, Director," Darling muttered, and it felt normal, felt comfortable, to fall asleep here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Little POV change here, didn't want to let it get too cerebral with Darling. I have no idea where this is going guys, I'm just playing in the sandbox.
> 
> Crits/comments/corrections are all appreciated.


	4. Chapter 4

Jesse sits in the cafeteria, and he sits a few chairs down. Pulls a journal from a pocket, begins writing.

Emily Pope sits across from The Director, unloads bags of food and a few sodas from a tray. Pushes a bag and drink toward Darling. He nods, still writing.

"You have questions," Jesse says, and Pope nods, opening her food.

"It's been a week, I wanted to see how things are going," she leaves the subject unspoken.

"With Darling?" Jesse's words pulled the scientist back into the conversation, not actually a question but a reminder. I know you're here, it said. I see you. 

He makes eye contact with Pope, but doesn't speak.

"He's remembering more," Jesse continues her thought. Darling back to his notes. "We've been talking HRAs and resonance a lot. Most of what he says is beyond me, but as I understand it he has an idea for another large-scale device-"

"Using Polaris," Darling cuts her off. He doesn't look up, but speaks to Pope. "The resonance is literally what it sounds like: a pattern that disrupts other vibrations from becoming intrusive and destructive. Any vibration can, in large quantities, become damaging or cause interference but the Polaris frequency may have been slowly tailored to offer a higher level of disruption with fewer cognitive impacts. The Director is able to-"

"Darling," Jesse interrupts his words. Only he plays back the last few seconds and they weren't words, it was static pouring out near the end. "You made it about one sentence in before it was Board-talk."

Pope is staring at him, not in an unfriendly way, but with a wary smile. He smiles back, which he must do wrong because now her face is blank.

"I'm making better HRAs," he says. 

"I'd love to see your notes, Doctor," she replies politely. He scribbles a final line then pushes the notebook across the table to her. He eats chips and soda while she reads. Jesse eats an apple. The silence in the room feels like sunlight. 

"I think I see," Emily finally says, leaning forward. "And you think the HRA amplifiers can be built into the existing pneumatic system?"

"It spans the whole House already, so it seems like a good location," Darling smiles at Emily, and for a moment they feel like colleagues once again. "Personal HRAs would still be needed as a backup, but this might help solve for any pockets of Hiss we haven't found."

Then Jesse stands, and Darling stands reflexively, and Emily looks serious again.

Jesse places a hand on Darling's shoulder and he has to think about the heat/weight/burden. Pope gathers their wrappers on the tray and steps away quickly, leaving Jesse and Darling to speak.

"Would you be able to work in your lab this afternoon?" She asks. Her face is kinder than he deserves, it's an actual question. Can I leave you alone? Can I get some free time? Can I get away/run/hide, can you dissapear/go/die- he lets his translation run but ignores the words. 

"Yes," he says, and nods. The Director seems happy, he hopes she hears I can be trusted/am functional/not burden. What he means is I will endure/suffer/try/please don't make me.

Pope returns, and she comes with him and The Director as they walk up stairs and stairs and stairs. People filter past, everyone seems busy. Happy. No one is screaming. 

Jesse walks him to his lab, to his desk. She gently nudges his shoulder, and he sits. The silence is awkward. Pope wanders around the lab, giving them a moment again. She lifts then drops on the the inertia spheres, the repetitive click of them like a ticking clock.

"I'll transcribe my notes for Pope," he says. 

"I'd appreciate that," Pope smiles. "I'll be in Probability if you need me, Jesse. Have a good day Doctor Darling." 

Darling doesn't watch her go but raises a hand. It isn't a wave, he hasn't figured out the details of social niceties again. Yet/again. He knows it was something similar, not right. But at least The Director doesn't have that worried crease in her brow.

"I'm going to Maintenance to help Ahti with some things. I'll come check on you in a few hours, alright?" She makes it sound normal. He nods with convincing casualness and turns to stare sightlessly at his notes. 

She walks away, he doesn't stand. The door closes, he doesn't follow. The static whine begins slowly, he opens his notes and pulls a sheaf of fresh paper from the drawer with steady hands.He can tell that she used a Control Point because the noise goes from dull to pounding in a heartbeat, and his hand shakes on the pen. He copies the letters without seeing the words. 

The tesseract models/flowers above him spin/shivver/fold/bloom. The inertia toy/timer clicks. The pencil/pen/flashlight he has gripped re-creates his own looping script on a blank page, a quiet whisper/scratch/hisssssss-

"Darling?" Jesse's fingers are on his shoulder, turning him in the chair. On the paper before him is a six sided rendering of a tesseract/lock/door. "I'm sorry that took so long. Were you able to copy those notes for Emily?"

He looks back at his desk: under the tesseract are two sets of identical notes, page after page of his own handwriting, nearly identical, beside an empty pen.

"Yes."

The static is gone. His hands do not shake. 

Jesse squeezes his shoulder, "Do you want to come with me to Executive?" Her question is really, You did it/good/not fail. Do you want reward/comfort/rest and will you follow/help/shadow/worship me again?

"Yes," his voice says, and he means it to all the questions. She doesn't need to take his hands as she leads him to the elevator, but she does let their knuckles brush together as they walk, another unspoken thing, one that he cannot translate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know what I'm doing, lalala!
> 
> There's 10 chapters of this written right now.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Had to insert this chapter late, and I apologize. For those of you reading this new, it won't matter, but for those of you who were on ch 9, well now that's ch 10. Again, SORRY! This is what I get for titling my documents "Ch1, Ch2.5, Ch2.Something, Maybe3?"

"How can we safely test it?" Jesse is shifting her weight impatiently, arms crossed. Darling supposes that as per normal she's nervous on behalf of everyone who is not herself, which in this moment means him. It is unpleasant to notice her worry.

"We can start by bringing someone with the Incantation into the room, slowly. I can tell you it already seems to be working-" he stops screwing down the cover when she interrupts.

"How do you know?"

He waits a long minute, finishes screwing closed the device, and stands. He flicks the machine on casually, but nothing obvious seemed to have happened. Honestly that's probably for the best, it means nothing exploded.

"Do me a favor, Director: as an experiment would you use that Control Point to go to Executive, wait a full minute, then return?"

"That will tell you some-"

"Yes."

She paces away, and stands in the nearby circle of tape. She pauses, as though to check this is correct. He nods, holds his breath, and with a rainbow blur that his eyes slide away from of their own accord, she is gone.

Darling exhales, grips the pneumatic tube beside him, and leans down to just breathe several times. He can still breathe, but nothing is shaking, he is not shaking. It's working. Her absence is palpable, but not painful, it’s not shattering. He's still half bent over when she returns just seconds later.

"Darling, are you alright?" She immediately rushes over, but doesn't touch him, looking him over for an injury perhaps. He's not sure. Her worry is again unpleasant.

"That was surely less than a minute, Jesse," He straightens again with a forced smile. This is fine. He is fine.

"I didn't think you meant it literally. Are you okay? You looked a little…" she makes a vague gesture he can't interpret.

"I'm fine. Better than fine, really! You left, and it didn't hurt," he looks away, stacking up tools, not considering the words.

"What?" Her hands are now frozen in midair. 

Darling bites his cheek, trying to keep smiling. Words are harder than he remembers, and even now th at he's able to think in Wnglish rather than concepts, he keeps saying more or less than he means.

"The PRA is working, resonating the Polaris frequency at least well enough that even when you leave, the Hiss signal can't get through. I didn't feel it at all when you were gone. Theoretically that means it's working at least well enough in this room to prevent Hiss control or conversion in the event a personal HRA isn’t working."

"Darling," she huffs, but it doesn't seem to be at him, she just sounds surprised. "It hurt when I left?"

"No I just said-"

"Before. Before, yesterday when I left you in your office to work, or when I went to unclog drains or attend meetings. You could feel the Hiss?"

"Yes," he was very busy cleaning now.

"I thought that Hedron-"

"Whatever Hedron did left me unable to be taken over by the Hiss but it- It was no Polaris. Not really. It was manageable, Jesse. Not a big deal," he wasn't looking up, flipping off the Hammer machine. Feeling socially uncomfortable was new and novel, almost interesting enough to make him feel less embarrassed. Almost.

"Why didn't you wear an HRA?"

"From where? Take one from someone who actually needed it?" His voice is dry, like she'd asked something stupid. He didn't mean it that way, but it was a little stupid he supposed. He wished she'd waited the full minute.

"Fair point," she has straightened, body language suddenly blocked off with a professional air. In a moment she had gone from Jesse to The Director. He wants her to drop it, he wants her to let it go, wants to vaporize into the pneumatic system and be anywhere but there. He is grateful that her voice is cool now, if not cold, "Are we not leaving this Hammer running?"

"I'd rather run some further reviews on the data before we leave it on long term. I'm also a little concerned about a Hiss reaction to its presence."

"Got it," she nods, looking around the room with a hand on the butt of her Service Weapon. Darling is painfully grateful for this shift. It wasn't worth her thought. He didn't care what she thought of him, at least he was going to continue to tell himself that, but she didn't need to waste time on-

He packs up the Hammer in silence, Jesse peering cautiously out the door before they leave, and then they are on their way back to Central Executive. Jesse flags down a patrolling ranger near the Mail Room exit and asks him to keep an eye open for anything strange on the next shift. That was the kind of thing the Director should be thinking of.

Their hands do not brush together as they walk. It doesn't matter.

"Ahti was looking for you, he said to meet him in his office," Emily says as soon as they enter his office, she's filling her pockets and preparing to leave. "I'm headed to Executive to get a report from Simon." And then Emily is gone with a rustle of paper and sharp heels.

Jesse turns to look at him, mouth open. She doesn't speak. He almost hates her for stopping to consider him in this moment. Her coolness is gone in the face of their sudden parting so soon, her expression is open, concerned. He tells himself again that he doesn't want her worry, and this time the thought sounds like a lie.

"I'll be here if you need me," he says, and steps back to the workbench where another shell for a Hammer device is waiting to be made.

To her credit, she doesn't say anything. She simply closes her mouth. Whatever she thinks, she seems to be respecting his attempt at detached professionalism. He thinks he sees a nod, from the corner of his eye.

"I'll check in with you around dinner time, I'd like an update as to when you think we can get those PRAs running in all of Executive," she pauses at the door. "I'll see you later today, Darling."

"Director," he nods again, and then the room is silent and empty except for him. He grips a plate of metal cut for a Hammer casing.

The shakes begin slowly, and are muted compared to before, he’s able to grip the screwdriver still. There isn't a sudden spike in the feeling, meaning she took the elevator, which he appreciates and is ashamed of simultaneously. He begins to open the functioning Hammer, the steady rhythm of the motions soothing. She probably wants time to brood on the elevator ride, he guesses, time to worry and fret and be concerned about him-

The screwdriver slips, gouging the soft skin on the back of his hand. There isn't as much blood as he expects in the blinking short moments before the pain sets in. He applies pressure with a wad of napkins left over from some work lunch and feels how under them the beginnings of a bruise form around the wound.

"Fuck."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly this was a slightly important chapter: gets us from professionalism to something else and that matters a bit. I feel like a moron for missing this in real time. >_<
> 
> Crits/comments/corrections are always appreciated, thank you all for reading and being part of this (tiny) fandom with me!


	6. Chapter 6

"How's it hanging Director?" 

Jesse raised a brow, but was smiling.

"Yeah, that was incredibly awkward, wasn't it? Let's pretend that didn't happen," Arish looked embarrassed, and she just smiled more widely.

"What didn't happen?" She asked indulgently.

"So we found the ammunition storage," the man said, smiling back now. "That's the good news. The bad news is that it shifted, it's far away from any pneumatic systems, and there is some Hiss presence in the area."

"Away from pneumatics? So we need a backup of some kind to deliver the resonance."

"I have an idea about that, and I wanted to come to you directly because strictly speaking I am… Well, not supposed to know this."

He looked nervous, but optimistic. Jesse wondered at the combination, glad he trusted her but curious as to what he was worried might happen if he knew more than he was 'supposed' to.

"I think we need to talk to Northmoore."

And okay, yeah, that was a little classified. 

"The pneumatic system goes almost everywhere, but the electrical system goes even further," Simon said quietly. "I think if anything we've done has become endemic to the House, it's the power system."

"You're right," Jesse spoke before Simon could look any more disturbed by the subject. "I'll talk to Darling tonight, see if he can think of a way to make this work. For now, tell me more about the armory: were you able to retrieve what you needed?"

Simon looked relieved and a little amused for a moment, and she wondered at that. But then he was explaining the extraction process for those supplies and introducing her to the man in charge of that extraction, who looked nauseous and terrified. She spent fifteen minutes with them, trying to humanize herself to the new ranger. She considered it a success when the man laughed with a quiet snort, and excused herself to do other jobs.

They had a plan to end lockdown, they had a timeline, and thus NSC idea might just be a useful tool to accelerate that process. Jesse bid the rangers goodbye, intending to head to Research, but paused in the elevator. Her finger punched Maintenance without thinking. She began patrolling the halls, wandering through the still badly-secured sector, with her Service Weapon in hand, trying to corral her thoughts.

Her mind wouldn't shut up. Was it enough to have the resonance amplifiers? What if the next threat was light, or color, a concept, a song? They had only been prepared for the Hiss at all because of Darling's absolutely idiotic experimentation with Hedron, and while his HRAs had saved them he was still feeling the repercussions of his efforts any time he walked past the range of a PRA. When she arrived Jesse had been furious at him for being a part of the machine that took Dylan, she had wanted a reckoning, but now she wasn't sure. Did Northmoore deserve his tomb? Trench to be an echo in the Hotline? Maybe they did, maybe working here made you do things that earned you the grisly endings she kept seeing. Did Dylan deserve his..?

She had been walking down hall after hall, eyes peeled for red, nose twitching for the rancid smell of mold, and almost didn't register the music. The tango made her smile, though, and she followed it to-

"Ahti," Jesse holstered her weapon. 

"Hello, Assistant. How is your wandering, are you cleaning the House?" Ahti leaned on his mop as he pulled down his headphones. His music wasn't loud, even now that she was beside him, and Jesse wondered how she'd heard it so far away.

"I'd like to think so, yes. We've gotten rid of a lot of the Hiss, but now it's a different task. I need to find people who can help me keep the Bureau in order."

"Pah," Ahti waved a hand. "This is easy, what you did before was quite a soup. The people here, they help you, no one is taking a nap on the ceiling anymore, yes?"

Jesse nodded, trying to follow along.

"But maybe that's not why you are concerned, maybe you are in the resin a bit. That's okay, not a bad thing. Go to bed, Assistant, and think in the morning."

Jesse nodded again. Waited for a long minute. Her companion began mopping.

"Thanks, Ahti," she said. He waved, pulled his headphones back on, and she walked away feeling very dismissed, to the elevator and another level.

She made it to Executive thinking, wondering. Were people hard, were they really, when compared to the Hiss and Mold and the Slide Projector? She was maybe a better janitor than director, but she couldn't change that, it wasn't like she could just step down. She didn't know much about the FBC, but she was fairly sure there was only one real way to stop being Director. Darling and Northmoore proved the point in a nasty way: even if you gave the House everything, it could ask for more. Neither had wanted this, and whatever else they might be, they were both just men trying to help. Trying to serve the Board, the House, humanity. When had she accepted that job, she wondered. She supposed it was the moment she'd heard Emily's voice through the safe-room speaker system, someone had needed help and so she had helped. And from there is was just a logical progression to today, but had she ever thought about it? Did she want to end up like Darling? Like Northmoore? Like Trench..?

A rasping noise pulled her from her thoughts, and she glanced around the brightly lit hall. The noise repeated, and thinking of Ahti's tango she followed it. 

And there was Casper Darling, snoring on his side with his cardigan balled up under his head, labcoat pulled over his shoulders. The day-bright lights weren't quite on his face but blazed past his cheek to light the room beyond him, where his glasses and tie sat on the floor. 

Jesse glanced around and sure enough there was a lightswitch. She paced over as silently as her boots would allow, and yes, there was a dimmer slider on the switch which she was absolutely sure she'd never seen on any lightswitch here before. In fact, she hadn't seen very many lightswitches (beside for the teleporting kind) at all, and she stared hard at this one for just that reason. Floodlights, sure, but actual lightswitches for the House lights? Not so often.

She slid the dimmer down, slowly, watching the room grow darker. She stopped at a twilight haze, when the colors of the room seemed desaturated, and glanced back over at Darling's sofa. 

"Goodnight, Doctor."

She stumbled to her own rest on her lumpy couch in a strangely dark office, stared at the nearly-black ceiling for a moment (wondering at why that seemed strange), and thought about her staff, her people: Pope and Arish and Darling and Underhill and maybe even Ahti. Maybe someday Dylan. She thought that if it was for them, if they were safer because of something she could do as Director, that was worth it. Maybe Trench would agree. Then she was asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm trying to differentiate the characters mental states by using different tenses, which makes my writing more reactionary for Casper and more paced for Jesse (I think) but my god I keep fucking it up and needing to rewrite whole sections. 
> 
> Comments/crits/corrections are super appreciated.
> 
> (What even am I doing...)


	7. Chapter 7

"Why do you call him that?"

"You weren't here before the PRAs were installed, were you? There was an event, before, classified as hell. Everything went to shit, and Darling went missing. When he came back he was always with the Director, followed her everywhere for months. Hence the name Duckling. I think whoever came up with it probably meant it to be insulting, but I don't know…"

"You don't mean it to be an insult, but still?"

"Yeah, exactly. He's a genius, but."

"I mean he still follows her everywhere now. He's her assistant right?"

"He's her assistant because he follows her, not the other way around. And that's not an official title. He's mostly recovered from whatever happened, like he was before, but. Still. Sometimes he's just this lost thing, following the Director around."

A long pause.

"Anyway, the nickname just stuck. Behind their backs, obviously, I wouldn't think it too loudly where either he or the Director could hear it."

"You think they'd be angry?"

"She'd be angry for him, which would be worse."

The voices that woke him fade, the rangers continuing on their patrol. 

Darling knew about the nickname, of course. Didn't particularly mind it, though the agents were right that Jesse would hate it. He thought it was just true: until the Pneumatic Resonance Amplifiers were installed, the noise of the Hiss had been a constant assault on his mind when he was any place farther than twenty feet from the Director. The Polaris resonance filled in all the gaps Hedron had left in him, and until that resonance was bathing the whole building he could hear the Hiss under his tongue when he was alone. Where lies the strangling fruit that came from the hand of the sinner, and all that. It was too easy to remember the words of the incantation. 

But it was better now. He could think. Words and concepts were separated, not one staticky information overload for every single thought. He could talk, and could spend hours anywhere in the House he wanted to.

Jesse let him help her anyway. He'd joked once that there was so much data, he was never going to go home. He hadn't meant it then. He wonders if he should regret the joke.

He assumed that someone in Executive would deal with the paperwork if anyone out there in the real world tried to declare him dead. Executive had already delivered boxes of his belongings to the lab, from when his former landlord finally evicted him. Not going home meant unpaid rent.

Emily had offered to help him find a new place. It had been just days after the lockdown ended, so her offering to spend any of her downtime with someone she'd been locked in with for weeks, it honestly had been touching. He'd stalled her until a weekend when she'd be gone, then loaded up boxes onto a dolly and walked them to the furnace. Everything but his clothes and notes he burned. He'd paused over the photographs, but decided with no one to pass them on to they were just more dead weight.

Ahti had been near the elevator, on his way to return the dolly. He'd smiled and taken the now empty cart, "Spring cleaning, näkemiin."

Darling just nodded. 

Emily had probably assumed he'd found a place.

He still slept in the empty conference room down the hall from the Director's office most days. No one was here by the time he'd stumble to sleep, and anyone who found him must have left him there. He'd been found snoring into all kinds of furniture over the course of his career, that was par for the course in Research.

That's how he finds himself waking up in the dead of night on a strange sofa feeling totally out of place and unsurprised and tired and miserable. He has no idea where he is but he isn't dead, or in pain, so it doesn't really matter. There's no red lights, no waves of heat. He's not choking. The gossipy agents are gone now. Everything is fine.

He pulls off his lab coat and cardigan with a snarl and throws them at the wall. A poster for some bullshit team-building-morale-boosting-crap rips down with them. This place is getting to him, he knows this, but there is no other place anymore. The outside world makes no sense. 

He had tried leaving one day, just to Oceanview. He wanted to sleep in a real bed, but couldn't stand the thought of the city outside, so Oceanview seemed like a great plan. He had been fairly sure there was some rule against going, definitely against staying, but gods, he had spent weeks between dimensions and really the rules were just made up nonsense they'd invented in the face of incomprehensible powers in hopes of reassuring themselves that something, anything, made-

He'd woken up in the motel in absolute terror. He hadn't noticed on the way there, but waking up had somehow brought to his attention- there was no Polaris. None. Even the hum Hadron had left in his bones was gone. It was silent, totally utterly achingly silent. He had dressed and left quietly, holding his breath. He'd frozen with his hand on the lightswitch, eyes closed, praying it would take him back, begging the Motel to please just take him back. The silence was worse than the Hiss, and once the third pull of the switch brought back the hum of the House and Polaris and Jesse he had wept.

Even with the PRAs humming through everything, the world sounds better near her. Better within about a hundred feet of her, but best within ten.

He's glaring at the misshapen lump of his discarded clothing against the wall. The clock says it's two-something in this dark conference room and he knows that must mean morning and not night because if it was two in the afternoon someone would need him for some crap. He rolls up his sleeves to the forearm, considers going to the labs. Considers the mostly-healed scratch on the back of his left hand. Considers the hallway before him.

He's halfway to her door on quiet sock-clad feet when he notices the dayglow-bright lights in the ceiling are actually dimmed. The House dims lights for her, ye gods. He doesn't care, it makes it easier for him to slip through the doorway to her office without waking her. She's immediately to his left, on her side on the sofa. Curled up, but facing outward, facing the door. Service Weapon on the floor by her head, and she's on her left side so just one arm motion and he has shards of Blackrock through his skull. It doesn't worry him. 

He closes the door and sits before her. It's best within ten feet, but maybe better than best within two feet. He stops holding his breath, just for a second forgets to hold it and-

And just like that she shoots upright, her hand flashing out to grab his throat rather than grab her gun. He sees the softening in her eyes when she recognizes him, watches her hand relax from a rending claw into just a hand again in what feels like slow motion. Still, her momentum has her pressing him back, palm striking just above his collar bones for one second, and then he's flat on his back wondering if she would have torn his larynx out if she hadn't recognized him. By the time he has stopped coughing she is half-reclined again and propped up on her elbows.

"What are you doing?" Her voice is sleep-thick, hair mussed and wild.

"Watching you," he says, but pauses, coughs, corrects himself. "Listening to you."

"It's weird," she says, blinking over at him. She didn't even go for the gun. He sits up.

"Is it?" His question is genuine. 

"It should be," she says, then her hands are reaching forward (he is inordinately charmed by her blunt nails for a frozen moment) then he hears the fabric of his dress shirt whisper against her fingertips, he is pulled forward and those strong fingers are threading into the hair at the nape of his neck and her breath against his skin, her chilled nose brushing his cheek in what he assumes is an accident as she tips his face, examines his eyes almost clinically, "Darling."

"Yes," he closes his eyes focused on the smell of soda, sugar and citrus on her breath. Does she ever eat real food? Violence and vending machines.

"What did you need?" Her hands anchor him, one threading through his curls and the other gently gripping his head to tip his face upward into the dim light. So she can see him, look for red, look for Hiss or Hedron or threat. Her chilled lips almost trace along his jaw as she moves him and he exhales shakily. He doesn't think he's a threat, but she'd probably know better than him.

"To be near you," he tells the ceiling. 

Jesse exhales, relaxes. Loosens her hands. She has decided he is not a threat, whatever that means right now. Or perhaps she has decided nothing is threatening him. It's still so hard to tell subject from action these days.

"Okay," he can hear her smile in it, the little unconscious one she made when she had a goal in mind. "Okay, I can do that." She pulls him down even as she sits up, until they've almost switched places and he's laying half on the couch, one leg akimbo. Her hands are on his chest, cold through the fabric where she held on as she manhandled him to his back.

Jesse looks down at him, her best cold calculating gaze, the one he's not afraid of any more. Darling just watches her face, patient, not asking for anything, just being. He's become an expert at being.

She moves carefully but not slowly, laying across him, her jaw digging into his chest slightly as she shifts. He feels her throw her feet back up on the sofa, tangling their legs. Her weight is almost off the edge of the cushions, so he wraps an arm around her, pulls her closer to keep her from falling.

"Near enough?" She asks, and it isn't rhetorical, her voice sleepy and relaxed again.

He can hear the resonance, he can feel it in his ribs, pressed through them both with the thump of her heartbeat, can feel it reverberate behind his eyes.

"Yes."

She is asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That one was fun, most of this I'm writing just because it's really FUN.
> 
> Crits/comments/corrections are so welcome.


	8. Chapter 8

She came back from Oceanview and he was standing to the side of the switch, watching agents file past. He had thrown up the usual sign about "do not pull" and was taking notes, obviously to keep himself occupied. Even though he wasn't facing her, couldn't have seen or heard her arrive, she watched him relax the moment she appeared then turn to smile at her. 

"Welcome back, Director." 

"Darling," she smiled too, moved around the warning sign in front of her, and fell into step with the doctor on the way to the elevator.

He wrapped up a note while walking, then shifted his pen to his left hand, leaving his right hand free beside her. She let their fingers brush against each other's, once, twice, then he gripped her wrist gently, fingers finding her pulse. He held her wrist there as they walked, and it should've been awkward but it wasn't. At some point they'd perfected the moving-in-tandem thing, and knowing that left her relaxed. Whatever Darling felt, whatever he heard in her heartbeat, he nodded and he let her wrist go. Before he moved away she reached out, gripped his hand to squeeze it once, then let go as well.

"Jesse!" Emily called, and she strode over quickly. She didn't comment on their hands, hardly glanced. "Did you see the switch moved again?"

"Just got back from Oceanview myself," Jesse said, while Darling flipped back to his notes page. Both scientists began writing. "Actually I heard some car traffic from outside, it sounded like late afternoon, which was a nice change of pace. The switch took me from Maintenance to here, but it appears in both locations so I think you could go the opposite direction? Needed to solve a little thing with dixie cups once you're there, easy enough to do. If you wanted to send a team in it seems very stable, but I'm not sure there's much to learn from this appearance. Might be a good way to scare the hell out of some new hires, though."

Both Darling and Emily looked up from their notes at that comment, and Jesse shifted uncomfortably. Darling, at least, had an almost-smile on his face. Jesse felt the wave of embarrassment wash over her: was that stupid, did they think her idea was silly? She realized she really cared, really wanted them to approve, or at least consider it. They weren't strange scientists to her any longer, she liked them both, their opinions suddenly mattered-

Emily thought about it, then nodded.

"You're not wrong, a little bit of real-life preternatural experience might be good for the newer agents," she made a note then looked to Casper. "Would you like to take them?"

"No," his response was immediate, but he didn't look scared exactly. "I find the Oceanview much less appealing these days than I used to. Consider sending Arish: between his good mood and ability to tell Hiss horror stories he might scare the agents without them realizing he's meant to. In fact, he'll probably tell them horror stories whether you ask him to or not."

Jesse nodded, it sounded like a good fit.

"I'll go talk to him and get a plan drawn up. You," Emily looked to Casper with a nod, "Make the Director eat something, will you?"

Jesse opened her mouth to protest-

"I heard about the new switch at six in the morning and I know you must have heard even earlier, and it's four now and you're just leaving so I know you were in there all day," Emily raised a brow.

"Okay, I'll go eat. Jeez…" 

Emily hadn't even stayed long enough to hear the agreement, just nodded again to Casper and taken off. 

"She's too young to act like a concerned mother," Jesse said. 

"I bought some of the premade sandwiches from the Caf, they had tuna at lunch time and I know you like-" Darling started to speak, sounding strange.

"Darling, you really are brilliant. I'll grab some drinks and oranges, we'll make it an actual dinner. Meet me in my office in ten?" She squeezed his hand as she asked.

"In ten," he agreed, and headed up way too many stairs to his own office. 

In about twelve minutes she heard the knock on her door, and looked up from the orange she was peeling. Darling entered without waiting for her reply, setting down two wrapped sandwiches and a clipboard of notes.

"Thanks," She handed him a peeled orange in exchange for half a sandwich and his clipboard. The data was just location and frequency of lightswitch appearances, to and from locations, and durations of the appearance.

Darling ate the orange, seeming fidgety, and Jesse did not look up from her clipboard. After a minute she shifted, eyes still on the data, and stretched.

"Sorry, I'm a little sore from walking through the Motel all day. Mind if I put my feet up?" Darling shrugged, looking over something in his notebook. She dropped her legs across his lap and was unsurprised that within seconds his fingers had found a line of bare skin at the ankle of her jeans. He put the notes down to eat his sandwich rather than stop touching her.

"Does this data suggest that the switch seems to preferentially connect locations that are difficult to otherwise access?" She looked up.

"Yes," he finished his last bite of bread and leaned over to point out a particular chart with a smile. "When the lockdown was in place, you yourself saw the switch behaving with what could be interpreted as helpful connections. I think even now its appearances aren't random, but rather intentional and we're simply not sure for who's movement they're intended. It was more apparent during the lockdown, with so few personnel moving around, and now it's less obvious since there are a fair number of us active."

Jesse nodded at the data. Emily thinks we're lovers, she wanted to say. She didn't, sat up straight instead, feet on the floor. She said, "Emily didn't look surprised to see you taking my pulse."

Darling took a sip of soda. He in turn didn't seem surprised that she mentioned it.

"I'll stop-" he stuttered for a moment. They were staring at the far wall side by side. "I'll stop being so casual with you. I apologize."

Jesse nodded, "If that's what you want."

He didn't reply, just looked at the orange peels on the coffee table that she had brought in here. She remembered finding it just so they could have these little working lunches, just so he'd have a place to set his glasses when they shared the sofa, she'd hauled it in from god knows where and somehow she always had an extra pillow on the sofa now but didn't remember meaning to find it-

"No." He said. She hadn't expected to be grateful. 

"You're probably still in shock and the reassurance of having Polaris nearby-"

"No. Maybe," he shrugged. 

"For what it's worth, I appreciate that you and Emily don't treat me- That you're casual with me. I can't just be 'The Director' all the time, it's exhausting," Jesse worked her jaw, knowing it was a nervous habit, knowing it was silly to stall. "Anyway, I appreciate your friendship, Darling." 

She held her breath but he just nodded, like it wasn't a big deal. Jesse rolled her eyes, knowing he couldn't see from where he was facing forward, and accepted that it really wasn't a big deal. Just because she'd been on the run and friendless didn't mean ethe rest of the world was so emotionally dysfunctional. 

"I'm taking a nap," she said, and threw her legs back into his lap. He picked up the last few bites of her sandwich and finished them, one thumb rolling small circles on the skin of her ankle. When she wakes later he's still there, he's taken her boots off and set them aside. Her legs are still across his lap, even though both of his hands are occupied with note taking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the more I poke about this fandom the weirder it gets here: where are all the people?
> 
> Like the Control Wiki isn't bad, but it's not very flushed out. It's hard to find gifs or images of some characters or scenes. The Archive here isn't inactive at all, but with a game and characters this good WHY IS IT SO SMALL? I was thinking about the Spare Footage and wondering if someone has analyzed it for secret messages and thought "surely someone has!" But maybe not? 
> 
> Anyway, this is self indulgent tripe, but crit/comment/correct as you see fit!


	9. Chapter 9

Dylan is awake.

Dylan is awake, and Jesse is talking to him now, at this moment, and he is speaking clearly, and nothing is breaking, and Dylan is awake. 

Darling swallows and chews on his joy/fear/nausea. He waits at the foot of the stairs, where Dylan won't see him if the door is opened too fast. He wants to see Dylan but doesn't want to scare/hurt/be hated. His thoughts are a disorganized mess.

Emily sits beside him on the stairs. She is reading a report from a junior researcher about fans, and is telling him about it in a calm quiet voice. She is telling him that they expect a new OoP to be created based on a rumor that they've been tracking, and this may be the first time that the FBC has anticipated an Alter Object before its creation. She is asking what he thinks about this, and he opens his mouth and says, 

"Interesting." 

And Emily is blinking at him and says, "You did the static thing again, with your voice."

He smiles, tries for an embarrassed and amused smile, and shakes his head.

"It's going to be fine," she says. "Dylan is going to be fine. I know you don't want false platitudes, and it's not like there's a lot of room for them in this job, but if he's conscious then he'll be fine. All the other Hiss infected staff that regained consciousness made full or nearly full recoveries."

He nods. He doesn't try to tell her what he's thinking because he's sure it's too complex for the English language. He distracts himself for a moment wondering if the Board would make more or less sense to people with other native languages and if some languages are better inclined to understand the data/messages of the board. 

He is scared Dylan will hurt his sister, he is scared Jesse will need to hurt Dylan, he is scared Dylan will hate him, he is scared Dylan will not, he is scared Jesse will hate him, he is scared Jesse will realize what a shitty surrogate father he made for her brother and that's a whole other rabbit hole of fears that he just opened up involving his age and the fact that Jesse even pets him within ten feet of her much less to touch her god damned perfect/not perfect/human skin. He is afraid to know what Dylan's pulse feels like and afraid that he may never get the chance to hug the boy/man again. 

Emily is still reading aloud. It is all she can do. 

It seems like moments, then Emily is jumping up and Jesse is next to them. Darling doesn't stand, just looks up at her, wondering what they talked about and how to ask. Jesse reaches out and absently cards her fingers through his hair once, then she's clenching her hands at her sides and he doesn't know what that means. Emily didn't even blink, launching into a polite line of questions about Dylan.

Jeesse's hair is that copper halo from where he is below her, and her voice is blue as she answers Emily's questions about Dylan, and reintegration and plans. Her face looks right, and Emily leaves happily enough, back to the office with both their desks but only her name on the plaque outside the door.

She looks down at him with an expression like stone and sadness and distant exhaustion. He has a million questions all at once but nothing to help her, nothing she needs to hear, so he just stands. Fidgets with his tie, straights his cardigan under his lab coat, waits.

"We talked about you," she says, and he can't breathe, but she slips her hand into his and leads him up the stairs, past the guarded door he fears/loves, and to her office. 

"Jesse," he says in the hallway, outside her office. She glances at a set of rangers walking past, then grips his hand harder and shakes her head at him. He lets himself be pulled into the office, the door closed. Locked. He tries again, "Jesse, are you alright?" 

She sits on the sofa (their sofa, a little voice calls out behind his teeth) without looking at him.

"I'm fine," she sits. Works her jaw. Stares at the wall where once there was a hallway to the Hotline chamber. The door is closed now, they are alone and she has nowhere to look to avoid him. 

He kneels in front of her, catching her eye. 

"He's awake. The Hiss resonance is gone but- he was very out of it. Maybe just tired. He said some things-" she stops, works her jaw again. 

"It wasn't the joyous family reunion you'd hoped for."

She laughs quietly, unpleasantly.

"Listen, I may be putting my foot in my mouth and what do I know, right? I'm just a crazy old scientist who lives in the walls," he tries to add a little spooky tone to his voice, to make her laugh. It makes her smile, a little, and that's enough. "But Dylan, before… He was an angry kid, then an angry young man, then an angry man. That's on me, me and Trench. We didn't do right by him, we- We fucked up. But I saw so much of myself in him, so much aggression and alienation, so many things I spent years learning to deal with and I just wanted to believe- No, I do believe that he can get past that. Who we are on our worst days does not define all we're capable of being. I hope."

He trailed off not knowing if any of that would help, if it even applied to what she'd seen today. He wanted to know so much more, wanted to know everything that had happened, but didn't want to hurt her by asking. So he stood.

"You should rest. I know for a fact you've only slept for maybe nine hours in the past two days. Get some shut eye, everything else can wait," he walked to the door.

"Thanks, Darling." She was unclipping the Service Weapon, tugging off her boots, coat- 

He turned away, "Of course. Sleep well."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dylan is another character I want so much more time with. Honestly I feel that way about almost all the characters, I just want another 20 hours or so with em. Dylan might have to wait for another story to go really deep dive on: I get the feeling Jesse knows he's not just trouble old but actually also a bad guy at heart. Or at least a morally fucked up guy.
> 
> Anyway, I woke up to a new Kudos on this fic, and thank you! Thank you all for reading, seriously: with a fanbase this small it feels so good to get any input and I love every dang view. 
> 
> Crits/comments/corrections and thumbs-up-without-any-detail are all welcome.


	10. Chapter 10

She refused to call the new electrically conveyed resonance field transmitters "NRA"s no matter what the naming convention thus far had been. They needed a name, though, and she'd told Emily as much. Emily was all for calling them NRAs, seeing as most of the people in the Oldest House carried a gun these days and "protected by the NRA" sounded funny to her. Jesse had left that meeting feeling old, like everyone else's sense of humor was just plain bad. Despite that, though, she was in a good mood.

Dylan's P6 cell had been completely destroyed to make space for more Altered Object storage, and Dylan was now considered stable enough to be out of his containment.

Admittedly the first thing Dylan had tried to do was levitate Jesse across the room and into a wall, but nothing had happened since she'd found and bound the Floppy Disk. His arm gestures were all for naught. Dylan was a justifiably rage filled man with PTSD and a chip on his shoulder who was mad at the world, but he no longer had superpowers and that was a win. So out of containment, but with a ranger at all times.

On the staffing front Marshal still hadn't returned, but thanks to the Hiss she knew that Arish could do the job. He didn't want the promotion, and she didn't blame him, but he took it. He'd been very clear that the moment Marshal returned, he would be stepping down and rubbing it in Jesse's face that he was right. And really, Darling had come back- it was possible Marshal would too.

So Jesse had just finished clearing another clog from the NSC coolant pipes, probably smelled a little bit like mold and stagnant water, when she found that Darling was leaving Dylan's room and she could just tell that the hardest part of her day hadn't actually yet started. 

Darling didn't even seem to notice her, which was actually remarkable since he'd been known to meet her at elevator doors before, somehow hearing her resonance over the sound of the PRA Hammers and HRA hums and now the NR- the electric resonance. He looked distant, distracted, hands wringing together and brow creased. He looked small, which was probably hard for someone who had several inches on her and the attitude of an excited high school chem teacher showing off exothermic reactions.

She let him go, didn't call out. She wasn’t sure why, in the moment, but even as he walked away she began to justify it to herself: he looked too upset, she wasn’t sure they should talk about Dylan, she was thrown off by his not ‘hearing’ her, she just forgot. By the time he disappeared down the corridor she had already realized this was all white noise, she hadn’t called out because she didn’t want to speak with him. 

Jesse went to her office. Weeks ago she had asked if a shower and bathroom could be put in the place of the direct path to the Hotline chamber, since she certainly didn’t need access to that chamber any longer. She didn’t think that anyone had done anything, but there it was, a sterile looking restroom with a chemical shower, waiting just off the Director’s office behind a false wall. There was hot water in the shower, which she didn’t think was standard for emergency showers, but she didn’t question it. The House and Board did what they wanted, and damn the laws of physics, right? She pulled a clean suit from a drawer, tucked in next to three ring binders and a date stamp with her name on it, showered and redressed. She had meetings all evening, and needed to grab something for lunch/dinner since she hadn’t yet eaten today and the Cafeteria would be closed before her last meeting even began.

She tried to forget about the look on Darling’s face as he walked away from Dylan's room. She tried to focus on the meetings she needed to prepare for. 

She had made it halfway through an explanation of the fiscal impact that their “free food” policy had created during the several weeks of lockdown, when she stood abruptly. 

“I have to go,” and Jesse was out the door. She hoped the staff would assume there was a valid emergency of some kind, a place she had to be. In reality she joged to the nearest Control Point and blinked to Research. The blast of air upon her arrival startled a nearby staffer, who to their credit didn’t scream even when she shouted “Sorry!” at them then hoisted herself up and out a nearby window, landing roughly on the polished cement on the other side. She was straightening her suit as she knocked on Dr. Pope’s door. 

“Jesse! What can I do for you?” Emily stood as Jesse entered the room, coming around the corner from her desk with a smile. 

“Just looking for Darling,” Jesse paused, wet her lips. “I needed his input on a detail on the NRAs.”

“Are we calling them that now?” Emily was grinning happily.

“No, we’re not- Listen. Have you seen him?” 

“Not all day, no. Maybe he took a sick day, finally, and never came in to the House at all? You could check with the front desk, they have a normal phone with an external number to call in to. We have a phone number in the yellow pages and everything!” Emily laughed at her own joke, and shrugged.  
She didn’t know, Jesse realized, that some of them never left the House. Jesse wasn’t sure how she felt about Emily not knowing, or assuming that of course everyone went home. She’d never asked Darling if he really did have a house, with a small “h”, or an apartment. A cat, like Langston. She didn’t, she had here, the Service Weapon and Dylan and Darling. Every day was a part of the lockdown for her. Had Darling just… Gone home? It was a bittersweet thought.

“Maybe. I’ll check, thank you Emily.”

“You should be headed that way too, make it an early night and go get some sleep. I swear I’ve seen you in that suit already this week: you don’t keep a spare in a drawer somewhere do you?”

No, Jesse thought, No, I don’t have a spare, just this exact suit: one in blue, one in gold, and a leather jacket, all here in drawers that they never leave unless I'm wearing them.

“Emily, but you could have just said I look like shit,” Jesse joked as she left. “Have a good night!” She jogged down the stairs, until she was out of sight of the doorway, then slowed, chewed on her thoughts. She hoped Darling was at home, pictured pet goldfish, instant ramen and canned coffee in the cupboard.

At the bottom level the Research cafeteria was still open, and a new hire happily sold Jesse the last ham sandwich and trail mix they had. There wasn't any soda to be found, so she settled on some kind of calorie-free sports drink and lamented the lack of sugar. Ahti had left a message that the thing in the pipes had a cousin in the air vents, which she thought meant more things for her to shoot. She wanted to get some sleep first, just to be sure she didn't put any holes in FBC property while she murdered sludge monsters. Apparently she'd been forgiven for the property damage during the Hiss incursion, but was now expected to hold herself to a higher standard. Something about Trench never using the Service Weapon, and Undehill had used the term "cowboy" to describe Jesse in comparison.

Jesse paused at the door to her office rubbing her eyes with one hand, then turned around, back the hall a few steps to the conference room.

Darling wasn't sleeping. She wished he was, but he wasn't. He was just sitting there, in a chair against the wall, with his hair disheveled and shoes off, staring at the dark.

"Darling," she said. He didn't reply. She sighed and slid down the wall until she sat on the floor beside him. His seat was armless, so she leaned the side of her head against his outer thigh and closed her eyes.

She didn't fall asleep, she knew this because she would have face planted into her own lap if she had, but she also couldn't tell how much time had passed when he finally spoke.

"Whatever Dylan has said about me is probably true."

"I am coming to find that despite my love for him, Dylan is a bit of a total shit head," Jesse sat up and tore open the sandwich. She began chewing and spoke despite a mouth full of bread, "He says a lot of things, about a lot of people and subjects."

"We did- I did let him down. No, I failed him," Darling shifted, but didn't look at her. "And when it came to my attention just how massive my failings had been, I locked him up and left him."

"I saw the files," she nodded, chewing. She didn't want to be dismissive. "You fucked up, you didn't support him in the ways he needed. I fucked up, I left him behind. My sin might not be as great as yours, just a one time mistake, but he doesn't forgive either of us. For anything."

It was quiet for a long while. She held up the other half a sandwich, tapped his knee to get his attention. He waved it off, so she ate that as well, then drained half the sports drink once done. She stood, gathered her trash and threw it in the general vicinity of a trash can.

"Do you forgive me?" His voice was small, so quiet in the not-dark night.

"That isn't a simple question," she tried and he finally looked over at her, an exasperated look like she'd said something incredibly stupid, which was unfair. She picked up his lab coat and shoes, and stood beside him. "Alright then: no, I haven't forgiven you. I also don't hate you. You made mistakes, you made many mistakes and they caused pain to people I love and people I've come to care about. You can't fix those, and I am disappointed in you for having done them, however my disappointment isn't the sum totall of my emotions. People are more complex than that and you know it, it really isn't a simple question. Now would you like to come borrow half of my comfortable sofa for a few hours before I have to go kill an eldrich abomination?"

He shook his head.

"I have a bathroom with hot running water," she said. He stood up, and she led him down the dark hall to her office.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I imagine it's exhausting for Jesse, trying to pretend that budget meetings and HR complaints matter to her when after they end she's going to have to be a janitor/exterminator/political-liason-to-extradimensional-beings. 
> 
> Crits/comments/corrections appreciated and loved. 
> 
> (Honestly, I might be using this fic as a distraction from current events because life is FUBAR. How are y'all doing, everyone holding up okay?)


	11. Chapter 11

It's night and he is not cold, and he wakes to find the room totally dark. This is worrying: it is rarely totally dark in the Oldest House. He looks around without moving his head, trying to keep his breathing even. Jesse is asleep on her side with an arm thrown over his chest, her face pressed to his neck. She is in just her tank top, no jacket, which tells him they'd intended to sleep, hadn't been knocked out. Probably. 

Light filters past, growing from dim to bright through vertical blinds, and that pattern is familiar in a distant way. Headlights?

He looks at the wall, the paint on the wall: they are in the Oceanview Motel. He remembers Jesse finding him napping fitfully in an armchair in his new office. She'd wanted to check on him and his new title, the sole member of the Defense department, office in the old security checkpoint on the near side of the Ashtray Maze. She'd said she had been walking the maze, and complained about not being able to sleep either. He remembers walking the hallways of Research with her, tired and laughing at each other, falling into walls and doorways as the plod along. It had felt a lot like college, from what he could remember of college. Then they got tired. He remembers her arms, her trying to levitate them both into an inaccessible office to sleep, then finding that the House had shifted and now it was a well-traveled breakroom, She had exclaimed "Fuck it!" and led him to a wall with a bright yellow line running up it. She'd smiled a little wickedly when they pulled the switch, hand over hand, like they were breaking a rule. The dislocation had left them falling into one another, laughing, and they'd both tipped into the same bed without thinking. They shared that tiny sofa all the time, wasn't this just an extension of that?

He listens now, and hears the hum of Polaris under Jesse's heartbeat, soft and bass heavy. He imagines it is below hearing, deeper, like whalesong. He falls back to sleep listening. 

In the morning it truly is morning: sunlight slants in through the closed blinds, and Jesse is sitting cross legged and running the hem of the sheet between her fingers methodically. She breathes out her nose, closes her eyes, says "We can't stay."

"I know, " he says pretending her words don't hurt.

"No, I mean. I want to and we could, only there's no bathroom," she clarifies. She is relaxed, not regretful of their exhausted rule-breaking, he thinks. Decides he's right. 

He smiles, scoots up the bed to sit against the headboard and watch her smile back. She is not graceful. Her short nails are chewed, she does not look at him through her eyelashes. When she considers him it is boldly, without guile or coyness. He chews on his decision to believe she is not regretful. To believe she wants to be here. Jesse does not move for a long time, so he does, running a thumb along her cheekbone, watching the light catch her hair as she leans into the palm of his hand. He can feel lingering traces of the warmth of sunlight in her skin.

"I can't- Darling. I'm in a position of- I can't be the one to-" and she's probably saying something important but her words are blue, and he's so tired of blue. He brushes a thumb across her lips then, trying to dislodge the words, and it works, she stutters to a stop. He smiles without really meaning to, thinking that she's the most beautiful competent wonderful person he's ever met, so he leans forward and kisses her.

She kisses him back like she does everything, he thinks: fully in the moment, committing to her decision, deadly effective. She has gone from sitting beside him to throwing one leg around him and over his lap, one hand in his hair while the other is gripping the undershirt he'd slept in. He thinks it's impossible that he hasn't kissed her sooner, but it's also impossible that she's kissing him now, and his hands and on her ribs pulling her close so that if it is impossible for this to happen again then at least he got it right this one time. When she finally lets him catch his breath he feels his skull thump against the headboard gently.

"I've been wanting to do that for months," he laughs.

"You've barely even known me for months," she let's go of his shirt but keeps her hand in his hair, sliding it to run the pads of her fingers along his shoulder, down his arm, to lace their hands together. 

He takes her pulse for a moment, finds it elevated. 

"Linear spacetime is for squares, Jesse. I've known you since the day you walked into the FBC."

"Spying on me through Hedron?"

"Spying is a strong word, talking-to might be better. How did you think my video presentations played themselves?"

"That's weird."

"Is it?"

"It should be," she laces their fingers together. "Do you have a pet goldfish?"

"No," he blinks, amused at the question. 

"And an apartment?"

"No," he swallows, less amused. "Not anymore."

She shifts so that she can lean, half on his shoulder and half on the headboard. The leg she had thrown over his lap shifts as well, and he is distracted by the dusting of hair on her thigh. He thinks it looks like she shaved her legs this week and he wonders why, and when she found the time, and again for gods sake why.

"I'm going to get a place. Probably not a fish, but an apartment, at least five blocks from the House bare minimum, and I'm going to fill the refrigerator. Or the pantry, at least. I think I'll buy spare clothes that I like, and maybe even a scented candle or two," she's looking at the window, eyes slightly narrowed against the glare. "We shouldn't stay in the House so much, none of us, we shouldn't let this job… Consume us. I want to have a home to go to, even if I don't see it every day."

"That sounds nice," he says. Nods.

"I'm going to get a real bed," she says, then looks at him again. Her hair is a mess. "And a sofa big enough that neither one of us falls off of when the other person rolls over." She cards her fingers through his hair, "And a bathroom," she adds.

"That's terribly pragmatic of you," his mouth is a little dry. He can't think of anything else to say, he isn't sure how to reply, how to tell her that her plan is a crazy pipedream and he loves everything about it, especially that she expects him to be on her sofa.

She leans over and brushes a final kiss against the corner of his smile, then rolls out of the bed, "Get dressed so we can get out of here, I have to pee." She's already slid into her dress shirt as he finds his belt and tries to shake the worst of the wrinkles from his slacks. Her jaw is set while she works the buttons on her blouse, and she looks over at him. "What?"

"You," He realizes he's grinning. "You have that 'I'm going to go kick ass,' expression."

She works her jaw silently again, a nervous habit he thinks is really her tasting the words before she speaks, and shrugs on her suit jacket. He tightens his tie, finger-combs through his wild hair, waits.

"I haven't gotten an apartment with the intent of making it home before. I've been moving around for a long time-"

"Because of us," he says, knowing she won't blame the FBC and Dylan. Maybe she should though. He does, now. 

"Yeah, yes. It's strange to think of some place where I could go and have, I don't know, a bookshelf. A potted plant." She leads them down the hall a few doorways while he carries his labcoat over his arm, hands in his pockets. The door slips open without her touch, she's too distracted to notice but he's not. What will the House, the Motel, think of her spending time away? Will lights still dim, doors still open?

"A goldfish," he wraps his hand around her own on the lightswitch. She pulls it while smiling at him, but her smile is open now, not wicked.

Then they are in Logistics, the large space seemingly unoccupied and silent. She is immediately at attention, eyes darting around the department, hand twitching to her hip. She winces at the red glare of a security camera, but then there is the sound of conversation, two agents talking, and she slowly relaxes.

"You know, I think I'm a little too uptight for pets," she says dryly. 

The light of the House feels more real than the sunlight of Oceanview, somehow. Darling wonders if that was a parallel dimension, another reality. He wonders where one buys a sofa, a bed, how does one even get an apartment? He can't recall any more, beyond there being applications maybe? 

The outside world felt so much closer in the Motel, where it was a million miles away.

They walk to the elevator in silence, and he punches the button for Research. She leans into his space to hit "Executive."

When the elevator stops for him, she puts an arm over the doors to hold the car and looks up at him.

"Have a good day," she says, and she doesn't normally say anything at all. He thinks of the NRA devices on his workbench, and how Emily won't be in for another hour, and how Arish is probably already here with a coffee and smile, and tries to remember how to even get to the front door that leads out to the street. It occurs to him to wonder if he even should. 

Darling stands, hands still in his pockets, hair probably a mess, and wants to kiss her goodbye, but just says "You too."

Then she's gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's not talk about our feelings because we're awkward idiots, lalala! That may be trope-y but at least it's not "they're in love but both think the other isn't."
> 
> In retrospect (read: SpaceMystic is making me more critically examine my writing because they're amazing) I feel like I could have developed these two even further before either of them gets the courage to kiss the other, but honestly I don't like the trope of "then they kissed and all was good and they were on the same page!" I feel like so rarely is that true (I'm slightly partial to "then they got on the same page, then they had awesome sex" but that, in my experience, is more true). 
> 
> So here we get a kiss, a confession that they're probably not entirely professional (as many of their coworkers had already assumed) and a nice morning. I promise not to put them through the wringer after this, but a kiss isn't a happy ending.
> 
> As always, crits/comments/corrections are very appreciated but so are comments that are just "it's okay, I guess."


	12. Chapter 12

When the shit finally hits the proverbial fan she actually feels it, like someone hit her bones with a ball peen hammer. Like the numb blinding pain of hitting your elbow too hard, but all over: under the bridge of her nose and in her hips and ankles and right at the base of her sternum.

She leans away from the conference table and coughs, gasps, and the whole meeting stops.

"Hiss," she chokes. It takes her two tries to stand even with her arms braced on the stone of the table. She's shaky with nausea when she makes it out of the conference room, shouting behind her, "HRAs on, now!"

Like any of them aren't already wearing the new, smaller versions of HRAs. Like her words would matter if they weren't. 

It never felt like this before, it never felt like-

She forces the nausea away, bolts to the nearest Control Point. The black pyramid is hanging above her, and for a heartbeat she thinks it will come crashing down, crush her into a fine paste between shifted concrete… But then she's reaching out, feeling along the ley lines in a way she didn't really realize she could, looking for the weak spot. Time is so slow in this moment, she looks though the house so quickly to find the threat/damage/enemy.

She sees Dylan on the floor above her, hands gripping the railing, looking down at her. His face is blank but she can hear his terror/excitement inside her teeth, and the rangers on either side of him are obviously nervous: they have been trapped in a moment of panicked sprint after Dylan. He must have felt it too, bolted out to see the pyramid, to look for her?

She twists her head to the side in what feels like slow motion, manages to look up at him just as she shifts away. All the other eyes in the room slide off of her rainbowed fracturing, their bodies subconsciously protecting them from thinking directly at what she is doing, but Dylan's still staring, frozen eye contact in a second that lasts an eternity. 

Then she's in Containment, and there's screaming, gunfire, the smell of ozone. There's less of the red LED-like glow than she anticipated, just a few staff members, one ranger, a floating miasma near the ceiling. She draws the Service Weapon and humanely puts a round in two of the infected agent's foreheads.

The ranger gets a shot off at her, through her thigh, and she fills his chest with a spray of blackrock moments later. She feels rather than sees the blue light drain from him, sucked into her like she's a devouring monster. Like she inhaled/ripped away his life. Her jeans are bloody and have two matched holes in the leg now, for entry and exit, but her skin is knit closed between them.

She crouches and the actions come back to her with practiced ease, how could she forget this? She makes a shushing noise at a crying agent, rounds the corner past the man, and launches the suspended paperweight she'd been floating through the last infected staffer's skull. The desks are covered in a mist of fine red blood for a long minute, then the miasma on the ceiling fades and the blood and bodies seem to lift, a rainbow blur, and are gone.

She is both glad to see the gore vanish from the office and gutted that she won't be able to send the bodies home. But, she thinks, with head wounds in all of them maybe that's for the best.

The only glow left is a line of red, a vertical stripe of pulsing bloody bright that glows brightest when she turns to face it.

"The lightswitch appeared about 30 seconds before the Hiss hit," an older agent says to her. Jesse looks at them, and they stand up from their crouch, dusting off their slacks. "The light was the standard yellow, I remember because I was about to call in the occurrence, but it flashed red. It was red before the other agents… Before things went to hell."

Jesse nods at the agent, turns, about to leave.

"Those other agents… They- they must not have had their HRAs on, they," the staffer is babbling a little, the shock setting in. 

Jesse grips their upper arm, makes eye contact, "Get to a safe room. Now."

"Yes ma'am!" Then they're gone, corralling up other staff members, calling out orders in a clear voice. Jesse takes a moment to be glad they bounced back, then she's walking up to the lightswitch with her spine rigid.

She pulls the cord three times, fast, and opens her eyes to dark and red. 

"I thought I wiped you fuckers out," she says. 

There are no agents here, thank whatever wants to listen. The Board. The House. Still the rooms glow red around the windows and there's a pounding behind her eyes.

She paces through the rooms, pointing the barrel of her Weapon into each doorway before her. They all open under her hand, all of them, some onto blackened voids and some onto solid walls of Blackrock.

She saves the door with the black pyramid for last, braces herself for the worst or best. The weirdest, maybe. The solution.

It's empty, no switch, just an empty room.

"Shit," and as she says it she realizes the problem. Her whole body relaxes a fraction, the coiled tension winding down. "Well fuck."

She holsters the Service Weapon and walks to the front door, peers out the windows. Black, inky dark, but somehow a red glare? No stars. A non-place.

She checks all the rooms again. Rings the desk bell. Calls out in each room, "Ahti?"

Nothing.

No switch. 

She collapses into the sofa in the lobby, rubbing the heels of her palms into her eye sockets to push back the dull ache. 

Is it the Hiss here, really, again? How did they get into the Motel? Through the Lightswitch? Did she and Darling bring it here? And if Darling is right about this place connecting many planes, have they brought the threat of the Hiss to vulnerable dimensions not their own? Is that why some of the doors were blocked by stone? 

She sits for as long as she can, then jumps up, storms through the Motel again. Rages. Sweeps the front desk clear, watches without surprise when the scattered files, phone, knickknacks all shimmer and reset to exactly where they'd been before.

"Fuck."

She tries to sleep, stretched out on the lobby couch. She chews her nails to the quick instead, and when the overlapping thoughts are too loud she takes her own pulse, fingers digging too hard into her wrist, twisting tendons to the side in frustration. She paces, sits. Feels like she should calm down, can't. The lights glow red for gods sake.

"Hello Jesse," Darling says. 

She jerks upright, hands gripping the yellow upholstery, forgetting to even draw her gun. Why does she always forget with him?

"A staffer told me you used the Lightswitch and then it disappeared altogether right after, they were a little concerned. Luckily it reappeared a few hours later, right in the middle of Research. Thought I should come check on you."

"Was anyone hurt in Research?" She asked, trying to slow her pulse. Bolts up, paces over to Darling. 

"No, after the appearance in Containment everyone who wasn't already wearing an HRA found theirs pretty fast. Though once all this is over I really think we need to look at the whole 'Lightswitch location's importance' subject again because it appeared in the hallway before the Firebreak right next to my office..." Darling was unfolding something on the ground with jerky motions. "I think it realized you needed assistance. That or I was anthropomorphizing inanimate objects out of worry. I'd just finished this little portable NRA when it manifested."

"Please tell me you're not calling them NRAs too," Jesse asks with a hint of outrage in her voice, hand to heart.

"I am the entirety of the Dimensional Defense department, and the Defense department calls them NRAs on interdepartmental memos. It's already a done deal: that ship has well and truly sailed, Director."

She pulls a face at the title, but he doesn't seem to notice that from where he's unspooled a banal looking electrical cord from the device, and then he plugs the little box in and she feels her tension lessen slightly. She bounces one foot as she watches him, retreating to the couch to sit. She still feels like a steel spring of energy, but it's less manic now, more manageable.

"It's a prototype model, something one of the new research assistants to Emily came up with. It's really very fascinating," he comes to perch on the other edge of her couch and gestures at the box whirring lowly. He's excited. "It's based on the NRA in-line transmitters, but it runs off the electrical current it's modifying. The original model only worked on DC current, but now we have a slightly better model that works on AC as well, and you can probably guess that due to its superior-"

He's inched closer to her, looking between her and the portable NRA, gesturing. Lecturing, just a tad, just a little. She parts her lips, considers her nervous energy and his own, considers his enthusiasm about the faintly glowing box.

"How long until things here go back to stable?" She asks.

"Oh, that is an excellent question actually, and the answer is: we don't know. We've never tested this before, not like this-" 

She smiles, nods, and with one slowly telegraphed movement she has both legs in his lap and an arm over his shoulder. He blinks owlishly behind his glasses and smiles with what looks like a little embarrassment. 

"I was worried about you, Jesse. I know, it's silly: you're the Director, you've proven that you're more than competent at dealing with anything thrown at you but-"

"You worry," she finishes, still full of energy. 

His hands were tracing lines up and down the hem of her jeans, running a thumb nail along the uneven ridge of denim. Her hand twitches on the back of his collar.

"Casper," she says and it isn't breathy, not sexy like she'd hoped for somehow. It's a question. 

Jesse shifts her legs, and he seems to understand the question she wasn't able to speak clearly, helps her use that little momentum to swing into his lap fully, chest pressed to his. There's a moment, just a heartbeat, when she isn't sure what the hell she was doing. She hasn't been in this place in a long time, hasn't given herself time to appreciate the way anyone else's hair fell, the way their eyes lit, the way their gaze drifted to her lips in a moment like this. Sure, he'd kissed her, was generous with the brushes of hands, the sharing of hurried lunches, sure, but what if-

She doesn't finish the thought: he smiles an annoyingly perfect little smile, and kisses her, and suddenly her whole awareness is hands and lips and the way her knees slid on the faux-leather upholstery below them.

All that nervous tension, all that coiled energy, and they ended up in a feedback loop of hands and lips. They've never touched like this, never holding, clutching, pulling close like this. She kisses him like she wanted to take him apart, because she does. She wants to make him fall to pieces. 

When she pulls away (and his hand on the small of her back slid underneath leather and cotton to press against skin so she had to try twice) when she finally pulls away she has to tip her head up, too close to put space between them otherwise. She pants, watching the dim ceiling for a moment, then he is pressing a line of open mouthed kisses, teeth and tongue and she can feel his smile, her eyes blinking shut, her body grinding down. She rolls her hips against him, and he's hard under her, moaning into her skin.

"Jesse," he said, and his voice is full of reverence, adoration. He's just as affected as her, just as destroyed, which is good or this would be downright embarrassing.

"How long?" She jerks her head at the NRA machine, but doesn't give him time to answer, kissing him again, tugging at his lip with her teeth before letting him speak.

"I told Emily not to send anyone through, no matter what, for at least an hour," the rumble of his voice reverberates against her skin. "I used my best 'Head of Research' voice, and I don't think she realized I'm not her boss."

Jesse laughs, and then remembers where they are, that Emily is somewhere probably watching a clock, and that she fired her service weapon today. She leans back, looks around the room. It's silent, the machine still humming. The glow of the lights overhead are more pink than red. Darling seems to have realized the same, hands on her skin lifting slightly.

Jesse turned back to face Darling, muffles an embarrassed laugh again, "It's the end of the world and we're making out like teenagers."

"You say that like you think we should stop," he jokes. She thinks it's a joke.

"You know all of the doors can be opened right now?"

"What?!" Darling jerks underneath her. "Are you kidding, even the ones with symbols other than the Pyramid?" He's trying to get to his pockets with her in the way. Jesse tips herself off his lap and stands, offering him her hand.

"Do you have a notebook?"

He gives her a withering look that's much less impressive with his flushed cheeks and wild hair, "Do you even need to ask?" Sure enough he has a waterproof yellow notebook with a pen poking out in his hand within seconds.

He rushes to the nearest door, pauses, "Jesse-"

"It's fine, Darling. I completely understand, hell I opened all the doors myself. I get it. Go poke things, take notes. Try not to fall in," she pulls her hair-tie loose to finger comb her hair into a more organized ponytail. Tries to reconcile her previous passion with the horrible day she's had this far.

"Fall in!" He excitedly pulls open the first door, like the idea of falling into it is the best thing he’s ever heard. 

“Why here?” Jesse asks idly. Darling makes a vague noise, questioning, so she clarifies. “Why the Hiss, why here, why now? We were here for hours, sleeping, no impact. What triggered this?”

“I’m not sure the Hiss is sentient. Hedron was, uh. Nominally. That’s a bit hard to define, I suppose,” Darling examines the void in front of him with a clinical interest. He walks over to the front desk and grabs a stapler, then walks back to the room and gently tosses it into the void. They both listen, silent for a moment, then Jesse walks over and picks up the same stapler off the front desk. “Damn, well that’s inconclusive then.” He shakes his head.

“I thought Polaris was sentient. That she was protecting me, guiding me, but… It’s more complex now. Not as cut and dry: was she helping me, really, or just directing me to the Hiss at the correct time. I have a lot of questions on that front.” Jesse takes off a boot, pulls off her sock, and holds it out to Darling. He blinks. “For throwing."

"No," he shakes his head, she pulls her sock and boot back on and he clarifies, "Won't make enough noise to tell us if there is a bottom down there."

She digs through her pockets, finds an apple. They sit cross legged in front of the open door, she eats the apple while he takes notes, muttering under his breath. Stress reaction, she thinks. Nothing to be ashamed of. She can murder an agent on the same day she kisses her… What is he?

She hands over the apple core and he tosses it into the void softly, they wait in silence. Nothing. Nothing. 

Jesse reaches into her pocket and pulls out an apple core.

"Amazing," he says, and smiles at her like she just performed a magic trick.

"Do you think we're being invaded?"

Darling shakes his head, not a 'no' and she can tell. Just an 'I don't know, I hope not.' 

"Just a flare up," Jesse says, like it will be true. "We've beaten it back before. This is nothing."

He nods, doesn't call her on the lie. They don't know, they never know, but they can pretend it's not terrifying. They both sit, looking out onto the abyss, silently. The lights of the hallway are slowly becoming less red, more violet. Darling takes her wrist, feels for her pulse, doesn't let go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lately I've been hearing the phrase "when in hell, keep moving," which is good advice. Life is FUBAR right now. But I've also been thinking a lot about (of all things) this pervasive vibe from the movie Session 9. It's this feeling of "when in hell, don't forget to stop on occasion." Sillent Hill 3 drew on that film a lot, and worked with the same theme, and I've just been thinking about that for this week. 
> 
> Shit's FUBAR. Pausing to recoup doesn't mean you're not goting to go back to working to get out of hell.
> 
> Anyway, here's these idiots not talking about their actual feelings and coping with stress in unique and sexy ways! It's not the LEAST healthy stress relief, at least? If you're feeling a hint of plot here, I swear that's gonna be a (small) thing... In another story. I'm wrapping up this Jesse/Darling thing first, then there should be a sequel to deal with Jesse and Dylan's relationship (with heavy doses of Unhappy Darling to boot).
> 
> Crits/comments/corrections are amazing and appreciated. <3


	13. Chapter 13

Darling had just wanted to find documentation of prior Motel journeys and the occurrence of something called the "clog" there, he'd just wanted to find his data.

"I found a little bird, and it told me you and the Director are close."

Now Darling would like to evaporate. Spontaneous human combustion wasn't a field he knew a lot about, but it sounded appealing. Dylan stares, waiting for a reply. Darling thumbs through beige folders. The younger man had casually greeted Darling on his way to the archives, seemed amicable, but had not been. Wasn't ever, these days.

"I'm fairly sure I pissed the little bird off, and he just wanted to say something nasty to get even with me. I'm fairly certain of that because that's what he said, before he mysteriously broke his nose," Dylan pauses, and from the corner of his eye Darling sees the boy scrub fingers through his now too-long hair: he had always hated his hair being long as a kid, but now he wouldn't let anyone touch it.

Darling glares at a letter scrawled on a folder, trying to decide if it's a 'G' or not, rather than think about if Dylan had actually hated his hair long or he'd just assumed it. He doesn't reply, and considers that Dylan has broken Darling's nose before, so whatever happens next will at least not be too new an experience.

"I keep an eye peeled nowa, just looking out for Jesse, just don't want her to be subject to pointless office gossip. And you know, I think that just maybe that bird was right," it isn't a question, probably because Dylan doesn't want to seem like he doesn't know. He wants confirmation without it looking like he needs it, and while Darling isn't sure what to say he has apparently paused too long, hands still in the folders, because Dylan laughs.

"Of course she's dating you, of course. Who else would she put up with, Arish? Pope?" Dyllan spits the names, voice so frustrated for a face so calm. 

Darling is looking for notes and trying not to look up at the boy, no, the man who has seated himself scant feet away. It is first thing in the morning, and Darling is fairly sure he still had a bit of shaving cream behind his right ear, and his tea is steaming in the mug sitting on top of the filing cabinet, oversteeped as all hell by now. 

"Well at least you haven't lost your sterling conversational skill," Dylan deadpans, and Darling would laugh nervously if he didn't want the room to shift and accidentally drop him into a chasm quite so much. "I admit to having some complex feelings about this though. On the one hand, I can't stand you and I can't stand Jesse, so of course: you deserve each other. On another hand it's creepy that one of the two awkward repressed not-fathers I've had is fucking my sister-" 

Darling's arm jerks, cracking his wrist on the metal edge of the filing drawer. He curses under his breath, represses the urge to haul off and punch his conversation partner who just keeps speaking, only now with a smile. Amicable.

"And the weirdest feeling of the bunch is a vague jealousy? That she's so much more interesting and worth your time than I ever was. She fucks up and makes mistakes and you don't even mind," Dylan is smiling his best blank sociopath smile, Darling thinks, and he isn't sure if the younger man wants to be punched or not.

"Her mistakes don't come with a body count," Darling trys the words, abandoning the pretense of looking for his files. 

"Yours sure did though, didn't they?" 

And fuck, Dylan has him there: every body in the last seventeen years could be laid at Darling's feet in one way or another. He can be consciously aware of the guilt that other parties may have held (Dylan, Trench, even Tomassi) but it doesn't change the feeling that it was all his fault. Slidescape 36 and Hedron and the whole endeavor, that was his search for knowledge, his hubris. Ad astra and all that stupid shit.

"But really, I'll let you in on a secret," Dylan leans forward, his face a mask of serious intent as he breaks Darling from his thoughts. The older man can tell the gravity of his word is false: this is just another knife the man is trying to bury in him. "Jesse has a massive body count."

"No," Darling walks to the door, ignoring the younger man now. Dylan is just trying to be a thorn in his side, to sow doubt for fun. "No, the Hiss agents she put down are on you. Or they're on you, and me, and Trench."

"But what about our parents?" Dylan calls it out as Darling opens the door. "What about the Dung Monkeys, and Neil?" 

Darling doesn't pause, keeps going, makes it all the way to his new office just outside of the Ashtray Maze, which isn't that quick a walk. 

And Dylan's knife is felt, in the hall here, far away from the boy. Making Darling pause.

He knew about the children in Ordinary, and the adults. Knew what their inability to find any or even recover a body meant. He knew Jesse had been, what, twelve? A twelve year old kid, frightened, confused, facing monsters alone, and in the light of day. Anything is scary at night, but for something to be terrifying in the daytime is so much worse. 

Darling stares at the wall, chews on the thought.

Dylan couldn't have expected Darling to care about Jesse having killed people: between the three of them they're a walking war crime and they all know it. Dylan had wanted him thinking of Jesse, bad wanted him forgiving a kid-

And that was it: the image was Jesse on the run at age twelve, Dylan only eleven and in the hands of the FBC, and Darling there for all of it at the age of thirty five.

The knife twists, the pain twofold: if he had been a better man both Dylan and Jesse would have had childhoods to look back on. Neither would have a body count, Dylan would be a son, and Jesse certainly wouldn't currently be his-

No one comes here, that's the point of his office's location, and so he can punch the wall as hard as he wants without repercussions.

It feels amazing, to just hit something and admit how furious he feels. He stares at the wall, then walks into the maze, makes a few random turns, and finds a lovely lounge. He flips the chairs, screams, feels his throat go raw, kicks out at a table, watches it splinter and shatter, hurls a lamp at a wall hard enough to send shards of ceramic spraying across the room.

Darling breathes, looks around, breathes more. He sees another ashtray with a cigarette still smoking in it, picks it up and takes a deep drag. Holds the cigarette between his lips, then lifts the ash tray and tosses it from hand to hand before casually throwing it into a glass wall sconce to shatter both. He pulls a seat back upright and collapses into it, glaring, finishes his cigarette, and stubs the butt out on the cushion of the armchair leaving an uneven melted black hole in the synthetic fabric.

His feet take him back to the front of the maze, where Emily is waiting, filing out some triplicate form on her ubiquitous clipboard. 

"Hello, Doctor," she says, eyeing him critically for a moment as he opens his office and flips on the light. "Sounded like there was Astral Spike in there for a bit."

He sits, lights another cigarette, stares at an old posterboard with a painting of the Oldest House on it. He'd had a whole stack of those, once, and this one was all that remained now, after the Hiss and his office being moved and the months of him barely being productive. His voice comes out more bland than he expects, "That was me."

"I thought so," Emily flicks down the paper on her clipboard, holds it at her side without sitting. "Frankly I'm just glad you're finally exhibiting normal emotions."

"I'm sorry," He puffs at the cigarette and squints his eyes. "Why?"

"Because it means you're still human," Emily shifts awkwardly, then speaks anyway. "I wanted to be angry at you, for keeping so much from me, but then you were dead, and that seemed petty. Not dead, but you know: missing and presumed to be stuck in another dimension forever. Then you came back, and I wanted to be mad again, but you weren't yourself. The Casper Darling I knew couldn't go ten minutes without getting into a debate, or argument, or at least launching into a spirited diatribe. But now you're breaking things again, and laughing, like yourself."

Darling raises a brow, smokes his cigarette and waits.

"You dumb motherfucker!" Emily Pope, head of Research and probably voted most professional in her department by half the FBC, shouts at him while slamming her clipboard down. "How could you not TELL me about your experiments with Hedron? Do you know how much better prepared we could have been if you'd worked with me? Where the hell do you get off keeping that kind of data from me! You endangered me, your coworkers, the whole universe, hell even Dylan! You put your morals on back burner to exploration for the sake of knowledge, and while I can understand your motives you cannot ever, ever do that to me again!"

"I am sorry," Darling stubs out his cigarette, "Do you feel better, having gotten that out?"

Pope stares for a long minute, catches her breath. She doesn't looks like she feels better, she looks exhausted and resigned and disappointed. Maybe she's going to punch him, and when did so many of his social interactions involve wanting to hit people or be hit by people? He doesn't say anything, he just doesn't have the energy left to give her an inch right now. Finally she shrugs, half sighs, "Sure, yeah."

She laughs, and it's dry and thin.

"Me too," Darling laughs as well, and even though the moment is bizarre and unresolved, it feels good to be able to laugh with Pope. "Sometimes losing your shit is therapeutic. If you ever need to destroy a hotel lobby, come on by: I have extra." He gestures grandly to the wall of the maze.

"I'll keep that in mind," Pope says. She purses her lips, suddenly once more calm and professional, setting aside the moment. "What are you working on in there?"

"Want to join the Dimensional Defense department and find out?" Darling smiles.

"Fuck... No, thank you. Just try not to end the world any time soon," She says. Darling thinks she doesn't feel very resolved, this wasn't the satisfaction she wanted. Well, wrecking a hotel lobby didn't really work for him either. She lets herself out of the office with a parting shot, "You're bleeding on the carpet."

Darling looks at his hands and he is, knuckles red where they impacted the first wall. With Pope gone he feels hollow, all his anger replaced by quiet self loathing. The cigarette left him tasting ash with burning eyes. It's almost seven in the evening, and he hasn't eaten since trail mix at four in the morning, but he isn't hungry, doesn't even want the comfort of food. Jesse is probably eating, or sleeping. Or killing somebody, correction, something.

He walks the maze all night, tries his best to get lost. He intentionally leaves his cigarettes next to some lamp in the Nth room he wanders through, accidentally leaves his labcoat somewhere an hour later and feels lighter. Falls asleep in a chair hours after that, and when he wakes finds the entrance is only one door away. His coat and cigarettes are on an end table in the lobby. He checks the clock, four in the morning, again. 

Darling walks through the firebreak back to Research, dropping his labcoat and cigarettes into the glittering blackrock void on his way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'm torn: I had planned on the next two chapters being the last two for this story, kinda wrapping up a few things and, okay, there's a sex scene because. Because I don't even know, I'm thirsty af, sue me. 
> 
> BUT that having been said, I feel like there's actually a whole bunch more I could do with these two BEFORE getting there. Or I could just obsess over the content of those next two chapters for the whole weekend, that's an option too.
> 
> WE'LL SEE!


	14. Chapter 14

"It's five, and I have to get someplace, so if anyone still has concerns please direct a memo to my office," Jesse stands from the meeting table as she speaks.

"You have plans?" Emily asks, obviously shocked but polite about it.

"I have to get home," Jesse says.

The team before her is composed mostly of agents who will get why this is funny, but it still feels good. Emily laughs, Arish stands and applauds dryly (because apparently she just hasn't been terrifying enough lately) and the junior Research staff and Rangers seem to at least appreciate the tone.

"I'm off the clock, don't call me unless Ahti needs me," Jesse waves, slips out the door, and shuts it behind her. She pauses, shrugs out of her suit jacket, and walks to her office. 

Darling is sitting at her desk, in her chair, sans labcoat and looking very casual. She just raises an eyebrow. 

"What? It's past five PM, you're not the Director. And this," Darling gestures, "Is just a chair."

He pauses, looks down, "I mean, it wasn't an OoP when we brought it in of course, but isn't a leader's chair just the kind of thing that would become an Altered Item?"

"Definitely," she empties her pockets onto a shelf, a sliver of Blackrock, some notes, a rubber bouncy ball she found and seemed suspicious.

"We should probably switch out your chair on a regular basis."

She laughs out loud at him. He seems very relaxed about the idea of her chair becoming dangerous.

"I'm serious,” his tone is not serious. “It's possible, we've had far more bizarre things happen here. We keep archetypal objects out of the House for a reason, but have we examined those objects that we consider intrinsic to the House itself?" He stands, walks a circle around the chair. "In fact, I can't recall if the chair is from the House or if we had these shipped in at some point. The pneumatics are from the House, so are the lights. What about the other fixtures? How do I not know that?"

"Wasn't your brain temporarily atomized across dimensions a few months ago?"

"I hardly think that matters: if a little discorporalization slows me down what am I even doing with the FBC? You manage fine."

Jesse smiles, leans on the edge of her desk. Darling is standing behind her chair now, his hands gripping the top, putting it between them. She's fairly certain that this is her least predatory smile, so she isn't sure why he's behind the furniture.

"How would you feel about being conscripted to move furniture?" She keeps her tone dry, because light isn't something she'd ever mastered.

"In theory or in practice?"

"In practice, tonight. Now."

"Sure, I don’t have anything important to get to, as you could probably guess from me borrowing your chair," he shrugs, steps back. "Which department?"

Jesse paces towards Darling, watches him retreat a step, and drops her suit jacket over the back of the chair. She opens a desk drawer, retrieves and pulls on her leather jacket instead, and tucks her current notebook in the pocket. She'll go over the meeting notes later, when she cares. Maybe.

"Follow me."

They make it almost to the street before she sees him stiffen. He doesn't pause, he doesn't halt or even slow, she just sees a slight tension in his jaw, and then they're outside. 

Jesse does pause then, ostensibly to straighten her jacket, breathe deeply, tip her head back and let a dusting of rain hit her face. She drags the moment out, so by the time she looks at Darling again he's composed. She wonders how that first breath felt, but she wanted to give him that moment without observation.

"It's just three blocks, would you mind walking?" She tips her head to the East. He nods.

Barley street is mostly empty, allowing them to walk side by side. She lets their knuckles bump against one anothers twice before she takes his hand. He is looking around, and seems almost not to notice.

Minutes later she rings a bell at street level, and giving her name gets the door buzzed open. The building manager breezes into the lobby as they enter, and shows them to the basement storage where Jesse's things were delivered just this morning. If the manager finds anything strange about the furnishings being new and still in plastic, he says nothing, just presses a ring of keys into her palm with a smile and shows them the freight elevator. He wisely disappears after.

She and Darling load up a few boxes and lamps on the first trip in, and after letting themselves into the unit and stacking the boxes in the apartment hallway they wander the rooms together. The realty agent did a good job, considering how little input she was given.

Jesse would have been content to settle for a shoebox with a murphy-bed. She didn't need much, and while the salary of the Director of the FBC was way more than she'd ever planned on, she didn't actually think she'd be home often enough to enjoy it. 

So Jesse had been thinking she'd get a little studio, but then Emily had told her to get more space than she thought she'd need because it was always good to have space for a workshop, or her paperwork, or just a hobby. Emily had pointed out that this kind of work tended to migrate home with you, and explained how she had always envied the little workshop Darling had put in his own garage once upon a time. She had apparently gotten the penny-tour during a department barbecue from Darling's ex-wife, who had banned science experiments from their living room, which Emily just couldn't fathom.

"You can see the House from here," Darling calls from Jesse's new living room window, and she likes that, it feels amazing to be so high up they can see above other buildings, see the House. He's taken off his tie, down to just a dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up past his forearms. The sodium glare of the city is harsh on his face in the dark apartment. They stare at the House for long moments before Darling turns away first, "Let's bring up that furniture."

She wonders what the ex-wife's name was, and did she have a pet that was once his, somewhere out past the city, in a suburb with garages.

Jesse doesn't use her abilities to levitate the furniture, even when Darling lifts his end of the sofa with such ease that she wants to punch something. It doesn’t take many trips, which Jesse is grateful for but also weirdly self-conscious about.

They shift all the furniture inside: one bed, one sofa, one bookshelf, some books and clothing. She forgot plates and pots and pans, forgot curtains for the windows and for the shower, but they find it's a glassed-in standing shower anyway, so that's moot. Once all her things are in the apartment, she takes off her boots and jacket. Watches Darling relax, slip off his own shoes like he lives here. The carpet is a pale beige, she supposes it's going to be a shoes-at-the-door kind of place. She's never lived anywhere that you took your shoes off at the door. She's lived places where you didn't want to touch the carpet, or there was no carpet, or no doors for that matter.

She has two tattered old boxes from the room she'd been renting in the city before she found the House. They open both and Jesse dumps the contents on the floor for review, trying to piece together a forensic profile of the woman who walked into the FBC that day months ago. 

She feels wrong somehow, vague like nausea, like a fever, like a missing limb. She wanted this to be a safe place, but all the confidence she’s gathered and held close to her palms since walking into the FBC, it all seems to have evaporated. She isn’t Director, she’s a conspiracy theorist with a crazy salary and no earthly possessions. She assesses the junk in front of her, trying to imagine her scant belongings as Darling must see them. 

Lemon scented body wash, which she remembered was a little expensive and what was the point of that? Old battered toothbrush, she kept forgetting to replace it way back when. Threadbare towels, some with the embroidered logo of the hotel she'd stolen them from. Books of poetry, spines broken and soft from love. A pair of weathered mens running shoes, patched in the pinky toe when she’d worn through them once.

"It's like I was another person then," she says, picking up a long-dead flip phone from the box. The number probably doesn't work any more: she'd prepaid three months on it, but it was long past that now. She won't replace it: who would she call? The hotline reaches everyone she needs.

"Traumatic events can make us feel like that. There's the before, and the after. Two different lives, and people."

Jesse looks up and Darling is smiling, pulling one of her old hole-riddled sweaters out of a box where it's wrapped around some plastic snow globe she'd kept. He doesn't even seem to have recognized what he said is probably about both of them. Probably about him, several times over.

His before: a wife, a garage, probably a university job without tenure, maybe a dog. Then the House: a laboratory, an assistant, a thousand questions. 'I've always been here,' he said on the tapes. She remembers flashes of drinks with Trench, memory whispers from her predecessor haunting the Hotline: the feeling of being on the bleeding edge, of adventure, and trust. Then Dylan: the hopes, the failure, the abandonment, the paranoia. No whispers from Trench on that, which is good. She didn't want to have any more hate for a dead man. Then Hedron, and whatever Darling was for those weeks when he wasn't here. He had called, he had existed. His words had been stilted and forced. Now, post-Hedron: a new lab, and Jesse, and mopping up the Hiss.

Life for him has been pared down, over and over, until all that's left of him seems to be the House and the Director. Life for her had been pared down to this stack of cassette tapes, keys to a car she is sure has since been stolen, a watch with a broken band that she had just carried in her pocket rather than replaced. 

"Would you have loved me, before Hedron?" She didn't mean to say that, the words feel strange in her mouth. Being away from the cement, away from the scent of Blackrock and musty carpet, it’s left her feeling drunk. There she is the Director- cool, competent, and efficient. Here she is Jesse, with threadbare towels, no car or phone number. 

"Yes," it's casually immediate, he didn't think. Then he looks up, realizes what he said, eyes go wide behind his glasses. Neither one of them has said the words, but that's close. That's a near thing. "Would you have?"

She wants to say yes but something in her rebels: she shouldn't have asked, didn't want to know. She tries to regain her composure, "No. Before the Hiss, before the House, I would never have understood you."

He's silent, unwinding the snow globe slowly. This doesn't feel right either. She’s fucking this up somehow, she’s digging herself deeper. She needs to fix it.

"I wouldn't go back, though. Not now," she fishes out the last item in the box, sets down a grimy coffee mug filled with pens and post-its. "I like this life, it's more- just more everything, and I don't think I could go back now, if I wanted to, but... I feel like I was trapped in this boring room. Plato's allegory of the cave. And not only did I discover the world beyond the cave, but the stars and other planets too. It's full of fear and danger, but it's so much more wonderful too. How could I go back to boring safety now?" She wants to say it's also the first time that less feels like more, that the House feels like monastic simplicity rather than poverty. That it’s the first time she feels like she got to pick something she wants.

"Waves both wilder and more serene," Darling said, his tone indicating he was quoting something, she almost remembers it.

"What was that from?"

"Some poem, Thomas Zane I think," he shrugs, flicks her book of poetry with one finger. 

“Who?” She asks. “Darling, did you listen- Have you been-?” 

“Jesse, what’s wrong?” He moves toward her, but she starts, making him pause. “Jesse.”

She holds her breath for a moment, thinks about the words before she speaks, “Did you listen to the FBC files on me?” 

“Some, but looking for you wasn’t really-" Darling pauses, seeming to realize what he is saying and how fucked up all this is. He goes on, and she's distantly grateful he doesn't avoid these topics any more. “It wasn’t part of my job. It was someone else's. Dylan and I spoke about you a few times, but he didn’t seem to want to tell me much. I think he didn’t want to say anything that would help us find you.”

“How do you know Thomas Zane?”

“He’s a poet, I think I must… I must have read his work in college. I don’t remember, just that it was good. Not as good as Wallace Stevens, but memorable enough I guess since I do indeed remember him. Why?” 

“He’s not real. He doesn’t exist in this world. He’s something I think I made up.”

“Well neither one of us is entirely from this world anymore, are we?” And he doesn’t even care if she’s insane, or they both are, or it’s a shared hallucination.

She was wrong: he is so much more than just the House and the Director. He doesn't hide anything from her anymore, all she has to do is ask, and she has so many questions. She wants to ask about poetry, and art, and if he ever had a pet dog. She doesn't know where to start, doesn't know the right question to unwind him, open him up like a tesseract. Maybe it's not a question- everything inside her head is so loud, so many competing thoughts and she doesn't know what she wants to say or ask.

They are silent, unpacking her last few belongings in the half dark. The tension stretched dark and cool in the stale air. Darling plugs in a standing lamp, switches it on, doesn't look up.

"I do now, so you know," she says, also not looking up. Jesse realizes that she wants to see inside his head without being seen. She wants so much from him without giving anything of herself. Jesse breathes out and decides that’s unfair to him so-, "I love you."

After a moment he sits on the edge of the sofa, heavily, a silent full body sigh of a motion. She blinks a few times, then walks over, stands in front of him.

"Not the reaction I'd hoped for," she mutters, trying not to cross her arms defensively. He doesn't say anything, pulls off his glasses, drags his hands through his hair. The perfect image of mildly disheveled and, for him, under-dressed. She would like for him to be anything but that right now. It aches under her ribs. She waits.

When he looks up he looks, for the first time since she found him all pale and catatonic on a cement floor, old.

"Of course I love you, Jesse, of course I do. How could I not?" He laughs, and it's like his normal laugh only with all the wonder and joy sucked out, so it's terrible. He puts his glasses back on to look at her. "And I'd like to give you good reasons why that is a moot point, and why you can do better, and I have all these selfless ideas about me being too old, you having a whole life ahead of you, that we only work so well because of the proximity, and further I theoretically work for you, on and on. But it's all bullshit, isn't it?"

She sits, waits. He isn't quite done, and she's become very very good at waiting in dark empty rooms with an ache in her chest. Well, the ache is new actually.

"Our job is the best and worst thing ever," he says, and she thinks that she knows what he means then. 

She has no life to live ahead of her, because her life is the House. She couldn't do better than him, both because he's actually really amazing (damnit) and because there's no one else she could spend time with if she wanted to. He's not too old for her because even with his twenty year headstart on dying, her job almost guarantees he'll outlive her. Though his job is also questionable, he's not Director and if he wanted he could just quit-

And it clicks: he has options but doesn't want them, and she has no options but he assumes she would want them. 

"You don't owe me, and I'm not settling," she grits out.

"Jesse, I don't want you to think I'm here out of some sense of duty! Hell," he closes his eyes to talk, like the room is too much. "I feel selfish for being here at all. You should be the one who can leave, I should be the one stuck in that haunted fucking afterlife of a place, you should have Dylan and a normal life to show him and instead-"

She cuts him off, "If the Hiss had never come, if Ordinary hadn't even happened, and you were who you are now: would you leave the Bureau? If things were fine and Trench was running the show and the world would keep spinning even with you living in the suburbs with a wife and a workshop garage and dog-" 

"No!" His eyes were open again, and he looked a little angry. "No, I don't- I wouldn't trade the FBC for anything. I wouldn't be happy anywhere else, what could ever be as interesting?"

"But you think I want that."

He was silent, considered it, "You don't?"

She snorted, "If I was from a normal family, went to college, saw my brother grow up happy, and I somehow read even one single memo about an OoP? I'd never go home again. I would camp in the FBC lobby until you hired me as assistant janitor."

He huffs, an almost-laugh. She knows he would do the same, feels the same. Wonders if that's actually how they've found any staffers in the past.

"You know me by now, Casper. I'm too hard headed to do things that I don't want to do. If you expect me to change my mind when things get tough-"

"I don't expect anything from you, ever," Darling was looking anywhere but at her. He swallowed, "But if all this has just been about not being alone-"

"It hasn't," Jesse cuts him off, bending down and moving her face into his line of sight until he looks her dead in the eye. She's crowded into his personal space, aggressive, but he doesn't seem to be shrinking away like in her office. Her palm is on his leg, his hand over hers now. He doesn't look nervous or sad, just genuine. Honest. Trying to tell her that he's happy no matter what she's willing to give but wishes he had more to give back. And she thinks, what about what he wants? And thinks about his showing up alone to the Motel, with a prototype device in hand and no gun. About his walking out the doors of the Oldest House today without hesitation. About the way his glasses look on an end table, arms folded up, and the little red patches they leave that linger on his face for a minute when he takes them off.

She thinks about the Hiss, and the four agents she put down the other week, and how could she want to kiss anyone with her mouth that had once tasted the words of that incantation? She thinks about Dylan, and the injustices done to her brother, and the agent (Roberts, maybe?) who got killed when he was a kid. The other agents when he was a man, all the ones Darling had lamented in the dark. She thinks about Langston's stupid fucking cat and a nameless suburban dog his ex-wife probably has. 

"We, you and I, don't get a lot of opportunities for good things. You are a good thing, to me. You're good to me. It's not about just not being alone. It's about the way you peel an orange for me first, before you eat one," she pauses. It feels like she can't shut up, but she has barely even said anything, all these words but she hasn't managed to find the right ones, "It's about the way you still take my pulse, even though I know you don't need to."

He looks embarrassed, stares ahead, hand still on her skin. He shakes his head like he's about to say something, so she speaks before he can. 

"I know what I want, that's not the question. What do you want, Casper?" It's a long silent minute while she waits, wishing she could fill the void with the right words and forcing herself to not try. 

"Fuck," he manages, like it's a sigh, then he's leaning over kissing her again and it's gentle and sweet, his hand gripping her wrist. He smells of ozone, as always, and a strange hint of cigarettes, and Jesse hasn't felt butterflies in years but his touch is so god damned reverent she isn’t sure time is working. When he pulls away, Jesse follows and climbs over him until she's straddling his lap. At first she intended to be reverent too, but she's pulling his hands to her hips, her own fingers tugging at the hair brushing back of his collar. She keeps it slow, but it's more than a little filthy, unquestionably full of want. When she pulls away for air she tips his head back with the hand she had fisted in his hair, moving him because she wants to see him, wants to watch him in the seconds after, regaining his senses.

"Fuck," Darling says again. 

"Very eloquent, Doctor," she shifts, sitting up a little, letting go of his hair, letting go of the moment if he decides that. "I don't have a lot to offer. A key to an apartment three blocks from the House, overpriced lemon scented body wash, and me. And full disclosure, I hate cooking and I leave half finished glasses of water everywhere."

He grins, leans his head back against the sofa as she moves her hands to fiddle with his collar. He's flashing a perfect white smile that probably made undergrads fall all over themselves once upon a time and is looking up at her like they aren't on a sofa she hadn't owned until just that morning. It's a real smile, all that joy and wonder he has now bubbling out.

"I can cook, so you know,” he says. 

"Great, well I'm a janitor's assistant, so I can probably make cleaning happen occasionally, because I've seen your office and you're shit at that."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, listen, I just needed this to be posted. Jesus. I cannot look at this chapter any longer, I just can't do it: I've been reworking this for 5 days which is forever for me considering I've been posting damn near daily and normally write one day and edit the next? I'm dying. 
> 
> So there's probably some major issues here, but right now I can't see them: it all looks like lines of code in the matrix to me now.
> 
> So please god please, crits/comments/corrections! I know there has to be some crap in there which needs work badly, but I can't find it.
> 
> Also I'm a sappy romantic for declarations of love like some kind of fuckin tween. I cannot apologize for that. It's my JAM.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> +Skippable chapter: explicit content+
> 
> So if you've read thus far and don't want to read a final NSFW chapter, that's totally cool: skip this one! I plan on having two more works in this series, one with snippets and drabbles, and the other going into Jesse and Dylan's relationship. So even if you skip this, fear not, there will be more in this universe! Either way, thank you for reading this story, I hope it was fun and weird and entertaining. 
> 
> If you liked this fic and want even more, go check out Leaving the House by  
> Spacemystic - it's set in a similar universe and I'm pretty much in love with everything about it (particularly Arish, who is complex and wonderful and my favorite!)

"Stay the night," she says, and she hopes he hears that it is a question and not a demand. She doesn't know if he hears the other questions she wants to be hidden in there as well, the other suggestions. She's never been good at this, particularly not the subtlety thing.

"I have to admit that I was hoping you wouldn't make me walk back to the House just to sleep on a sofa," his tone is light, but she realizes that he really was hoping, didn't think it was a given that he'd stay here. He also seems to have missed the other questions.

"Stay and make love to me," she clarifies after a moment. It took a few seconds for her to decide on the language, because her initial instinct of ‘we should fuck’ seemed a little too forward for a pitch to Darling. So did anything with the phrase 'until we break the damn bed' so Jesse files that thought away for later as well.

"Oh," he says, and that grin is back. Somehow Jesse had assumed he would be embarrassed by her language, she was even a little concerned he'd say no and she didn't know how she would have recovered her pride in the face of that, but- "If that was the question then yes, absolutely I'd like to stay the night."

He is too far away in this large room, she wants to crowd close to him. The darkness here not dark enough, not the dark of the House, not the dark of a cave, smothering and absolute and normal.

Jesse stands and holds out a hand, finds that it is perfectly steady, and she recognizes that she isn't nervous, doesn't have any trepidation or hesitance despite not knowing how to ask the right question. Everything feels close and real and like it's her first clear lungful of air in ages.

Darling takes her hand, and she leads him to the bedroom where they had set down the new box spring and mattress. She had torn off the plastic wrappings then thrown a stack of blankets onto it during their move, and now when she gently pulls him with her to sit a single blanket tumbles off the edge to the ground.

The darkness is a living thing in this room, the windows less in number, and it’s somehow more like home. His palm against hers is the relaxed comfort of falling into a bed after a long day. She wets her lips, tries to speak a few times, doesn't know what to say. She hopes she doesn't need to say anything, hopes he understand that she already trusts him after a dozen or thousand nights sleeping beside him, being at her most vulnerable while he looked on. 

Apparently her lack of words doesn't mater, because then he's kissing her again, and she decides she doesn't have to not to have a conversation about her trust right at this moment. She kisses him back, hands fisted in his dress shirt which is still ever so slightly damp from their walk here in the rain. His hands are busy tracing her hips and waist under layers of clothing. She pulls back long enough to take him in, his confident grin and ridiculously caring gaze, then she's back to tracing his teeth with her tongue and making him smile against her lips.

Jesse has managed to unbutton his shirt and is sliding it off his shoulders when she realizes that he has somehow managed to half unbutton her own and has her bra unclasped.

“How did you do that though my shirt..?” she feels like it's maybe a silly question, but she can't help it.

Darling huffs a little laugh in reply, breaking away to drag her blouse and bra off in one motion. He presses a kiss into her neck while she pulls his shirt off one sleeve at a time, his teeth tracing along her skin distractingly. Men's dress shirts are normally not this difficult to remove.

“I am a man of many talents, Jesse,” his lips brush her skin through the words as he moves up her neck, along her jaw. She can’t manage a reply so just sighs into the space between them, eyes closed.

Jesse drags her fingertips along his chest, delighting in the ability to touch him. She always delights in that, is always so happy that he lets her. To be fair it's a two way street: the day he started taking her pulse as a greeting was probably the day she started trusting his touch. It occurs to her that, in retrospect, they probably could have done this weeks ago. Months ago. At the House, at Oceanview, this was probably always on the table and she just hadn’t known. Well, hadn't wanted to know, yet.

He pulls her hair free of its ponytail, tucking a lock behind her ear on one side before he bends to press a soft kiss to her throat just below. Jesse leans into his touch.

She has to pull back and look at what she’s doing to unclasp his belt, and he keeps his hands on her while she does, his fingertips tracing lines on her skin, then the button and fly are undone and she’s just not quite rude enough to take his pants off herself. She stands, peeling out of the last of her clothing instead, giving him time to get as undressed as he wants. When she’s finally nude and looks up he’s sitting, paused, in just his boxers and socks. Watching her. She doesn’t shift, tries not to stare too long at the muscles on his arms and thighs and the tented fabric of his boxers.

“Darling?” Jesse asks, waits, then when he doesn’t reply she sits, pulls a blanket over herself as she moves. She watches him watch her for a long minute. He's half smiling, turns to look at his hands and lick his lips. He doesn't seem nervous, just silent, like he can't find the right words, so she tucks the blanket under her arms and tries again, “We can get dressed and order Chinese food if you’d rather not- If you want to. I won't take offence to a rain check.”

He lets out a breath, half laugh and half sigh, shakes his head. Smiles at her and takes her hand before speaking. 

“It's nothing, it’s not even important, I just didn’t think- It’s been a long time," His smile is a little sad maybe, a little self deprecating somehow. "I didn’t think I’d ever find anyone else who would be more interesting to me than an OoP, to be honest. I thought my days of human interaction, well, of emotional and physical intimacy were just passed. That's a young man’s game, it’s all science from here on out. No one could understand the work, you see, and who could ever compete with the fascinating things in the House?"  
  
Jesse laces their fingers together, "It's been awhile for me too, if that's any comfort."   
  
Darling looks briefly disbelieving.   
  
"I was on the road a lot, I didn't exactly have time for dating or relationships," Jesse elbows him gently in the side, rocking the against each other with her movement like, making her think of the Newton's cradles all over the House. He rocks back. 

"I didn't think I'd ever have time for a relationship again, but here you are, a person who cares about me, who I care for, who I-" he stutters and goes on, "And you just keep surprising me: not having time to date, really Jesse? Like I could ever believe there wasn't a line around the block to spend an afternoon with you. You're the most interesting thing in the House, the most interesting person in or outside of the House, and you have time for me?” He laughs, looks at their hands.

He is more than the House and the Director, he is ozone and poetry and oranges and a little part of him is the harmony to the sound under her own heartbeat. She isn’t sure what to say, so she just opens her mouth and tries her best, even as she feels the blanket over her chest slide. She's never been good at this, but she's trying, damn it.

“For a long time all I was looking for was answers. For knowledge, I guess, and a place I belonged. I didn’t think I’d really find any of those, seventeen years is too long to keep up hope like that. To have all three is… Unexpected would be a word for it. And while I didn't expect more than that, I'm glad for it,” Jesse smiles, then presses a soft kiss to the corner of Darling’s lips. "So I'm surprised at this too, and happy. Maybe there's some lingering disbelief in me too, that you're really here. I'm glad you are."  
  
"I'm glad too."   
  
"And maybe I didn't find time to date because I'd never met anyone I wanted to make time for. Now I have," Jesse waits a beat, then lets the blanket slide back down to her waist. Darling is back to a real smile now, no sadness at all, and she smiles as well when his eyes flicker to her chest as the blanket drops. She kneels on the bed, moves to the middle, and tugs his hand gently. “Now unless you wanted Chinese food instead, I think you should take the rest of your clothing off.”

He lets her drag him closer, turning to crawl along the bed until he can gently tip her onto her back, cage her against the mattress with his arms braced, "I would like to take a moment to say that I have known a lot of very intelligent people in my time but you, Jesse Faden, may just have some of the best ideas I've ever heard."

Then she’s actually grinning, trying not to say something smug while helping him strip out of his boxers (he manages the socks on his own, while she tries not to laugh). Then rolling over to lay half across his chest, kissing him as her hands stroked down his chest, hips, then along his length, thumb grazing the head of his cock, trying to catalog his reactions. No matter what she does Darling's hands are in her hair, dancing over her skin, trying to pull her closer and closer. His hands are on her hips, her ribs, tracing her shoulder blades, like he too is cataloging and filing away bits of data gained from all over her form.

She only has a few minutes to touch him before he is gently peeling her hands away, rolling her over again, kissing his way down her stomach and hips to settle between her thighs. He pulls one of her legs up, bends her knee, runs open mouthed kisses along her thigh until he is tracing her sex with his lips and tongue. She thinks she might be fixating, but the sight of his arms flexing to move her around is mesmerizing, and she presses her head back into the mattress when he smiles from between her legs, eyes gorgeous and dark over his glasses.

She’s breathing in deep gasps when he slides his fingers into her, slow and curved and so very sure. She thinks it’s unfair just how good this feels, how thoroughly he pulls her into her component parts, particularly considering that he’s never touched her before, shouldn’t know what to do. Of course he does, of course the physicist and engineer can unmake her, and what even is he a doctor of she wonders, but all the same of course. Then with a slow drag of his tongue she’s shaking, gripping the sheets so she doesn’t pull his hair, thinking vaguely that she hopes nothing is levitating or flying around the room because this is too much, so much, more than one human should ever get to-

Jesse blinks back patches of red and blue and blinding white, panting and finally gasping out his name as she thinks for a moment in nothing but shapes and colors. Slowly she listens to the blood hammering in her head, feels Darling has crawled his way up over her to press her ear to her chest, listening to her racing heart slow along with her.

For a second her fondness is almost overwhelming, a wave of "yes" and "mine" and "always keep you here, keep you safe, keep you, keep you, keep you," pounding louder than blood, louder than the Hiss or Polaris had ever been.

Then she blinks, and abruptly decides he deserves to have this turned around on him. She smiles as she only half-gently rolls him onto his back again, tracing his chest and hips with her lips instead of hands this time. By the time her mouth is level with his cock, she already has one hand wrapped around him, the other on his thigh to stay balanced.

“Jesse,” she looks up from where she has knelt between his thighs, lets her gaze linger all the way up his body to his face, taking in muscles and fat and where she can see the lines of his collar bones. Darling has half sat up, weight on his elbows, and she glances at his arms for a moment appreciatively before she locks eyes with him. His hair is a wreck, his cheeks ever so slightly flushed, he’s still wearing his glasses, and really that shouldn’t matter to her but it does and she loves it.

He doesn’t seem to have anything to say, or maybe the sight of her knelt with her lips parted just above his dick just distracts him, she can’t tell. When the silence stretches too long and he hasn’t spoken, Jesse licks a long stripe along the base of his shaft, almost a challenge. Did you have something to say, she wonders, can I leave you unable to speak?

She knows she’s going tortuously slow, her hand working the base of his length which she can’t fit into her mouth just yet. She drags her tongue along and around the head of his cock, wanting to catalog this too, learn his reactions and preferences. It feels a little shameless which she hopes is a good thing, and to be fair he’s certainly not complaining. After a few minutes she feels rather than sees his shaky arms give out as he falls back to the nest of pillows behind him. She takes that as a good sign, and an excuse to remove her hand and try to swallow the whole of him, which based on the noise he makes seems to be appreciated. He’s quieter in bed than she expected, her only feedback has been little subvocalized groans. She only manages to keep him that deep for a minute, breath burning a little in her lungs as she bobs her head, but then he’s speaking again.

“Fuck, Jesse, I-” and another little noise that she appreciates so much more for its rarity.

She pulls back, wrapping her hand around his shaft again as she speeds her movements, until he comes with another sigh and her name on his lips. She keeps her hand moving for a few moments, until the bitterness is too much for her, then sits up and swallows it down. She can feel his eyes on her as she does, isn’t sure what he’s thinking but hopes it’s good, hopes he knows how amazing it was to make him make those noises. And actually-

“You saying my name when you come is on the list of the best things I’ve ever heard,” she says. Fuck grace and subtlety, he should know, he should know explicitly. She's never been good at this, she’s trying, but subtlety is just beyond her.

Darling laughs, then sits up and pulls her into his arms, kissing her cheeks and jaw and lips until she's sure he can taste himself on her tongue. They fall back to the lumpy layer of pillows and blankets below them.

“I wanted to-” he starts looking a little awkward, but she shrugs.

“I’m fairly sure you didn’t have a chance to buy any, and any of the condoms I might have in these boxes are probably expired.” She shrugs, reaches for the blanket on the ground, drags it over them.

“Of course you would be the kind of woman to just buy condoms herself,” he jokes.

“Boy Scout motto, Darling, though I bet the Boy Scouts would rather not be quoted in this setting. Why rely on a partner to be responsible when you can be responsible in advance?”

“Your logistical forethought is one of the reasons I so adore you,” he murmurs, and she settles her head on his shoulder, tangles their legs together. He’s back to tracing patterns on her skin with his fingers, geometric lines sketched over her ribs.

She doesn’t want anything else to exist but this room, doesn’t want to think about power, or her job, or the NRAs running even now, or the roots of the building where she knows she’ll need to go soon, or the view from the window of this apartment that will show her the House, will show her Home. She doesn’t want to accept that this moment was stolen, this wonderful evening was a special treat that will have a cost, if only in the number of memos piled up on her desk. In another life, maybe, she and Darling could have the promise of a hundred more nights like this to look forward to, a million more kisses and she could hear him call out her name in this bed, in this apartment, any night she wanted.

Then again, in another life she wouldn't have met him, wouldn't have cared if she did, and he'd have a wife and house in the suburbs. Probably a pet dog.

This is not that life, thank fuck.

“When we go back to the FBC,” she says, and his fingers don’t still, but they do slow. “When we go back and we have all day meetings, and I have to shoot things, and you have to fight other departments about safety measures, and everything is exhausting. When we’re there,” she pauses, looks up at him until he makes eye contact with her in the mostly dark. He’s looking from below his (now smudged) glasses. “When we’re there, and some bureaucratic bullshit is going on and everything is tedious, I want you to look at me in the middle of all that noise and remember… I give amazing head.”

He laughs, a bark of surprise.

“And also I do, I love you,” she adds.

“I love you too, Jesse,” He stirs, sits up, kisses her on the cheek before looking for his boxers. “And yes, I can confirm that you do give exceptional blow jobs.”

“I know, right? You were amazing too, by the way, pretty sure I saw stars there. Good enough I think we should get celebratory Chinese food,” She follows him, dressing herself efficiently. Straightening his lapels once he’s back in his dress shirt and buttoning it up.

“I have to admit I may have been thinking about General Tso’s Chicken for a moment there, just a moment, when you mentioned it earlier. I feel like that’s justifiable in light of all the cafeteria food we’ve eaten for the last few months.”

“Completely forgivable,” She takes his hand, and he takes her pulse, as they walk into the living room, her living room (their living room). “But you will owe me a bite, just for that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that is a thing which I wrote and you read and welp, here we are. Honestly writing porn is still a little awkward for me and good god damn have I been practicing (I have some fics that are just, bam, every chapter! And yet...). I'll admit that was a tamer scene than some you might see, and honestly that's intentional: it's fun to write all kinds of kinky weird sex, but it's also pretty fun to write realistic and honest sex too. 
> 
> Anyway, I hope that was a satisfying, no, happy, no, pleasant ending- Jesus all of these sound like sex puns right now! What, am I a high school kid again? "Haha, happy ending!" 
> 
> Trying again: I hope you all enjoyed the story in its entirety, I hope the dialog was compelling and in-character, I hope the emotional growth and development was paced and believable, and I hope the sex was relatively hot. Thank you all for your time, and as always, crits/comments/corrections are highly encouraged so I can go back and make this better!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Leaving the House](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24535267) by [spacemystic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacemystic/pseuds/spacemystic)




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